
Class 

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 



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THE CATHEDRAL ABOVE THE DEVASTATED HOUSES OF RHEIMS 



THE WINNING 
OF THE WAR 

A SEQUEL TO 
"PAN-GERMANISM" 



BY 

ROLAND G. USHER, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, WASHINGTON' UNIVERSITY, 6T. LOUIS 

Author of "Pan-Germanism," etc. 
WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 




HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 



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JAR 23 1918 



The Winning of the War 



Copyright, 191 8, by Harper & Brothers 

Printed in the United States of America 

Published March, 1918 

c-s 



©CI.A494294 



TO THOSE MEMBERS 

OF A NOBLE PROFESSION 

WHOSE SKILL AND DEVOTION 

SAVED THE LIFE OF ONE MOST DEAR TO ME 

GEORGE CANBY ROBINSON 

GEORGE MARVINE TUTTLE 

WILLIAM EMIL SAUER 

CARL EBERBACH 



CONTENTS 

BOOK I. THE GERMAN MENACE 

PAGE 

Chapter I. The New Pan-Germanism 3 

The War Itself Changes Problem of Victory — Germans 
Change Their Strategy — The New Pan-Germanism — 
Vital Effect Upon German and Allied Strategy of Russian 
Revolution — Optimism of Allies Wavers for First Time — 
True Difficulty the Failure of Allies to Understand the 
War — Victory Already Assured for Allies — What Remains 
to Be Achieved. 

Chapter II. The Original German Strategy of Victory 13 
German Strategy Based on Physical Position of Germany 
— The Formula for Defense and Offense — The Necessity 
for the Creation of Central Europe — Strategic Problem 
of Its Creation — Original Military Problem in the North 
— Possibility of British Participation Discounted — 
Diplomacy to Simplify Military Problem — Logic of a 
Casus Belli in the Balkans. 

Chapter III. The Invisible Army 29 

Victory Dependent Upon Ratio of German Strength to 
That of Foes — This Dependent Upon Exact Information 
and Scientific Calculation — This to Be Provided by Spy 
System — Spies Also to Weaken Striking Force of Foe — 
Projects to Stimulate Revolt and Disloyalty in Enemy 
Countries — Spy System in Neutral Countries. 

Chapter IV. Disagreeable Complications 36 

Original German Calculations Wrong — Problem of Vic- 
tory at Maximum— Liege, Entrance of Great Britain, 
the Marne — Loss of Moral Issue — Failure to Win in 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

France: Trench Warfare — Failure in Africa, India, 
Pacific — British Empire Rallies: Army Trained — Com- 
plications Accumulate as Years Lapse — Italy, United 
States, and Others Enter War. 

Chapter V. The German Solution op the Deadlock in 

France 49 

The New Strategic Problem — The Solution: Assault 
on Rear of Trench Line in France — Necessary Prelim- 
inaries in Italy, Balkans, Poland — Russian Army to Be 
Crushed — Political and Diplomatic Results of War in 
East — Work of the Submarine. 

Chapter VI. The Strategy op Defeat 62 

Necessity of Providing for Defeat in Field — Necessity 
of Turning Allied Strategy of Victory Against Them — 
War Permits Weakening of France and Great Britain 
in Men — Economic Wastage of Enemy Territory — Ger- 
man Navy and Merchant Marine to Be Preserved — 
Submarine to Reduce British Supremacy on Sea — Treat- 
ment of Belgium, Serbia, Poland — Moral Justification 
of This Policy. 

Chapter VII. The Economic Defensive 75 

Long War Essential to New Strategy — Ability to Pro- 
long the War Without Economic Exhaustion Vital — 
Fighting the Blockade — Germany Must Retain Rela- 
tive Economic Strength After War — Must Fight It at 
Lower Cost — Without Depletion of Permanent Plant — 
Effect of Blockade Favorable to Central Europe — 
War to Insure German Predominance — Cost of War 
to Enemies to Be at Maximum — Probability that Defeat 
Not Be Disastrous if War Properly Fought — Case of 
France, 1792-1815. 

Chapter VIII. Utilizing the Russian Revolution . . 89 
German View of Economic and Political Problem of 
Russia — Its Relation to That of Germany — Anti-German 
policy of Tsars Prevented Rapprochement — Germany 
Could Not Afford to Develop Russia — Pan-Germanism 
an Attempt to Thwart Russian Strength and Enmity — 
Revolution Makes Russia Safe Ground for Economic 
Expansion — Immediate Significance of Revolution Dur- 
ing the War — Difficulty in Way of Its Immediate Use- 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

. fulness— Value of New Relationship to Russia — Revolu- 
tion Makes Militarism in Germany No Longer Essential. 

Chapter IX. The Democratic Defensive ..... 105 
Undemocratic Character of German Empire— Applica- 
tion to It of Democracy Fatal— The Defense Against 
Weakening of Germany by Its Introduction— Case of 
France in 1814— Germany Must Adopt Democracy 
Before Defeat Is Final— Allied Terms of Peace Then 
Become Impossible— If German People Loyal to Father- 
land Can Govern Through Democracy as Well as 
Through Empire— Key to Situation Attitude of People 
at Large. 

Chapter X. The Basis of German Confidence ... 119 
Superiority of Scientific Calculation and Long Prepara- 
tion — Unity of Purpose, of Command, and of Action — 
New Strategy Successful Thus Far— Defensive in France 
Assured — Expectation of Economic Assistance from 
Russia— Submarine Successful— American Army Will 
Be Too Late or Not Well Trained— Reliance Upon the 
Invisible Army to Delay It— Central Europe Already 
a Fact — Future Economic Needs of Germany Already 
Assured— War Continues Merely to Determine the Ex- 
tent of Victory. 



BOOK II. POSTPONEMENT OF ALLIED VICTORY 

Chapter XI. The Heavy Cost of Optimism .... 135 
Allied Optimism Based on Superiority in Resources — 
Expectation of Aid from German People— Time Would 
Win for Them: Economic Exhaustion and the Blockade 
— Military Victory Scarcely Essential — Result in Re- 
tarding Preparations in England — Allies Also Based 
Strategy of Victory on Same Figures which German 
Strategy Was Meant to Obviate— Allied Strategy Also 
Involved Frontal Attack on Prepared German Positions. 

Chapter XII. The Price of German Isolation ... 149 
Character of Allied Coalition— Result Upon War Aims 
of Allies— These Aims Lacked Unity— Military Ob- 
jectives Did Not Possess Same Value for All Allied Na- 
tions — Adhesion of Some Nations Involved Military 



CONTENTS 

PAGJS 

Operations More Difficult than They Could Perform 
Unaided — Case of Italy — Case of Greece — Case of 
Japan — Effect Upon Formulation of Terms of Peace — 
Allied Diplomacy Sets Armies Task of Maximum Diffi- 
culty — Diplomatic Explanation of Lack of Unity of 
Command — Cause of Such Policy — Allied Notion that 
Real Task of Armies Not Winning the War, But Pre- 
paring the Way for Maximum Peace Terms — This One 
Cause of Postponement of Victory. 

Chapter XIII. Politics in War-time 167 

Efficiency of Conduct of War Dependent Upon Democ- 
racy — Political System Planned for Peace and Not 
for War — Democratic Handicap Upon the Armies Great 
— Difficulty of Finding Experienced Men — Difficulty 
of Securing Administrative Co-operation; of Provid- 
ing Industrial Co-operation — Lack of Legal Authority 
to Act — Fear that the War Would Destroy Democracy 
— Attitude of Political Parties to the Conduct of War — 
Parliamentary Difficulties in France— Attitude of Labor 
Toward Prosecution of War — Hostility of Legislature 
for Executive — Hostility of Civilians to Army and Navy 
Experts — Administrative and Political Causes of Lack 
of Unity of Command — Solutions of Administrative 
Problems in England; in France; in United States. 

Chapter XIV. Probability op German Economic Ex- 
haustion 188 

Exhaustion Not a Positive But a Relative Fact — Depends 
Really Upon Lack of Morale of German People; Upon 
Their Disloyalty; Upon Their Unwillingness to Suffer; 
Upon Unlimited Resources for Allies; Upon Immediate 
Restoration of Plenty by Peace; Upon No Assistance 
from Russia — Fallacy of Fighting War on This Expec- 
tation. 

Chapter XV. Probability of Democratic Revolt in 

Germany 199 

Expectation that War Would Be Won with Aid of Ger- 
man People — Assumes that the Constitutional Issues 
Decided in Germany on Basis Purely of Administrative 
Convenience — Constitutional Settlement Regarded by 
Germans as Diplomatic and International Fact — 
Assumes Also that German People Hoodwinked by 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Rulers — Germans Believe that Germany Is Not Demo- 
cratic Because of Foreign Interference in German Do- 
mestic Affairs — Bismarck's View of Governmental 
Problem — German Notions of German History — How 
Germans Regard Allied Insistence Upon Democracy fop 
Germany — Attitude of Majority to Democrats and 
Socialists — Attitude of Sr laller States Toward Prussia — 
Importance of Definite Conclusion as to What German 
People Are. 

Chapter XVI. The Solidarity op Central Europe . . 216 
Allied Diplomacy Attempted to Separate Germany and 
Her Allies — Belief that Austrian and Hungarian Peoples 
Desired to Revolt — Allies Were to Aid Them to Throw 
Off Yoke, Not to Conquer Them— Effect of These Con^ 
elusions Upon Military Strategy — The Allied Formula 
of Victory Not Really Military — Allies Assumed a 
Real Lack of Autonomy and Liberty in Austria — 
Allies Assumed that Notion of Democracy and Liberty 
Same in Central Empires as Their Own — Allies Under- 
estimate Power of Economics of Nationalization — Inter- 
nal Problem in Central Europe Complex, Not Simple — 
Allied Diplomacy Failed to Create Revolt — It Also 
Gave Color to Official Explanations of War as One of 
Aggression and Conquest by Allies — Effect of Allied Ob- 
jectives as First Announced, on Austria; on Hungary; 
on Balkans — Probable Solidarity of Peoples of Central 
Europe. 

Chapter XVII. Failure on the West Front .... 235 
Success and Failure Relative Terms — What Victory 
Must Mean — Why It Seemed Easier to Win in France 
— Diplomatic Objections to Offensive in Balkans — 
Disadvantages of Offensive in France — Why It Was Un- 
dertaken — The Result Has Been Failure — What Is 
Necessary to Win in the West Now — Expediency of 
Campaign There Determined by Cost of Victory to 
Allies; Its Value to Germans During the War. 

Chapter XVIII. Cardinal Military Errors .... 248 
Allied Strategy Directed Against Original German Strat- 
egy Only — Allied Campaign Gave New German Plans 
Opportunity for Success — Value of Russia Its Potential 
Aggression — Sacrifice of Russian Army — Its Result — 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Half-hearted Offensives in Balkans — The Error of the 
Rumanian Offensive — The Italian Campaign Against 
Trieste — Result of These Successive Defeats. 

BOOK III. THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

Chapter XIX. The Certainty of Victory 267 

Postponement of Victory Due to Idea It Need Not Be 
Won in Field — Notion that Victory Certain Only with 
Aid of People in Central Empires — Sponsors of This 
Solution — Rests for Its Certainty Upon Dependability 
of Such Aid — Difficulty Is that It Is Not Dependable — 
Elaborate Character of Preventive Measures in Central 
Empires Against Revolts — Assumes that Subject Peoples 
Might Thus Win Literal Independence — True Objec- 
tion to Reliance Upon Popular Aid Its Inconsistency 
with Moral Stand of Allies — Allied Case Rests Upon 
Aggressive War — Reliance of Allies Upon History and 
Religion — Attitude of American People — Degree of Vic- 
tory Depends Upon the Trust We Can Repose in Peoples 
of Central Empires — Impossibility of Now Trusting 
Them Completely — To Base Victory Upon Their Assist- 
ance Is to Put Ourselves Defenseless into Their Hands. 

Chapter XX. Defeat Through Victory 285 

Without Aid of German People Military Victory Neces- 
sary — What Will Maximum Victory Comprise? — Its 
Cost Too Great to Make It Expedient— Man Power 
and Economic Resources of Allies Not Unlimited — Ex- 
tent of Effort Not Possible Under Old Industrial System; 
Under Old Financial System — Superiority of Resources 
of Allies Altered by Russian Revolution — Continued 
Strength of Great Britain, France, Italy After War Im- 
perative — Military Victory Not Likely to Affect True 
Strength of Central Europe — Nor Convert the People 
to Democracy — Ultimate Safety Only Possible with 
Their Co-operation — Must Not So Fight the War as to 
Increase Difficulty of Securing It — Our Own Professions 
Regarding Democracy and Civilization Limit Character 
of Our Victory and Terms of Peace. 

Chapter XXI. The Old Europe and the New . . . 298 
Allied Notions of Victory Based Upon Old Strategy and 
Diplomacy — They Called for Old Formula: Weak Ger- 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

many and Strong Russia— On This Basis Germans 
Have Already Won the War— Old Europe Destroyed 
by War Itself— And by the Russian Revolution— With- 
out Russia, First Objectives of Allies Impossible to 
Win— Factors which Destroyed Old Europe Not to Be 
Destroyed by Armies— No Victory Can Restore Old 
Position of France in 1814 or 1870— Or the England of 
1814 or 1870— Effect of Nineteenth Century on Sea 
Power— Military Control of Old Objectives Can No 
Longer Have Old Results. 

Chapter XXII. The Positive Assurance of German 

Defeat 314 

Allies Have Lost Europe and Won the World— World 
Controlled No Longer by Europe But by a New Inter- 
nationalism—New Victory Is Ready for Allies— Strategy 
and Diplomacy Merely Need to Utilize It— German 
Victory Cannot Achieve Their Real Objectives— Or 
Imperil the Allies in Future— Control of Europe Now to 
Depend Upon Non-European Factors— These the Allies 
Already Control— True German Offense Against Democ- 
racy Refusal to Recognize International Equality and 
Law — Old European Council of Six which Germans 
Expected to Control Is Already Dead — New World a 
Fact— New Non-European Sanction for European 
States— Positive Assurance of German Defeat Lies in 
Fact that German Strategy and Diplomacy Purely 
European — Moral Isolation of Germany Measure of 
Extent of Her Defeat— International Weakness of Cen- 
tral Europe— Necessity of Exclusion of Central Powers 
from International Council Until They Can Be Trusted 
— Vast Gains of Internationalism During the War. 

Chapter XXIII. The Invincible Entente 331 

Offensive and Defensive Strength of Atlantic Powers— 
The Greater Strength of the New British Empire- 
Gains of All in Administrative and Industrial Efficiency 
During the War— The Atlantic Powers Will Control 
the World's Supply of Capital— Their Monopoly of 
Cotton, Rubber, and Wool— Their Practical Monopoly 
of Iron and Coal— They Will Be Economically Self- 
sufficing— Conspicuous Weakness of Central Empires- 
Sea Power Assures Defense and Offense of Atlantic 
Powers— New Freedom of Seas Will Strengthen the 



CONTENTS 

TAGE 

Present Sea Power — Why Old Sea Power Was Vulner- 
able — Why It Will Be Invulnerable in Hands of Atlantic 
Powers — Weakness of Offensive Position of Central 
Empires — Homogeneity of Atlantic Powers — Victory in 
Europe Likely to Weaken Central Empires at Home. 

Chapter XXIV. The Logic of Victory on the West 

Front 352 

Original Logic of Victory in France — The Offensive 
Position in Europe — Strategic Position of Belgium and 
Alsace-Lorraine — Secret of Transfer in 1870 to Ger- 
many of Latter — Effect Upon Neutrality of Belgium — 
Consequent Weakness of French Defense — Effect of 
Their Retention by Germany at End of War — Military 
Frontier of United States in Belgium — Imperative 
Necessity for United States of Freedom of Access to 
Europe — Imperative for United States that Sea Power 
of Great Britain Remain Unimpaired. 

Chapter XXV. The True Military Objective . . . 363 
Necessary Premises of Victory— First Objectives of 
Allies Now Impossible and Inexpedient Because De- 
pendent Upon Continued Strength of Russia — True 
Objective of Allies to Protect European Members of 
Atlantic Powers Against Aggression — Military Position 
in Europe of Atlantic Powers — Position of Great Britain 
and France Stronger than Before — True Weapon of 
New Allies Is Sea Power — Nothing Now Needed Except 
Natural Military Frontiers in Alsace-Lorraine, Tren- 
tino, and Isonzo — Four Essentials: (1) Continued 
Strength of France, Italy, and Great Britain After 
the War; (2) Continued Supremacy on the Sea; (3) No 
Foothold on Atlantic for Germany in Europe or Africa; 
(4) Temporary Isolation of Central Powers After the 
War — Limited Victory in West and Italy All that Is 
Needed — Expediency of a Defensive War for Two Years 
—No Offensive Until Absolutely Full Strength Thor- 
oughly Organized — Victory Certain Beyond a Doubt. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Cathedral above the Devastated 

HOUSES OF RHEIMS Frontispiece ' 

Central Europe Facing p. 130 

The Balkans in 1914 " 150' 

The West Front, March 1918 " 238' 

The Italian Front 260 



PREFACE 

This is an optimistic book for pessimistic 
people. At the moment when the American 
army is about to enter the trenches, a very gen- 
eral feeling of despondency and a fear of actual 
defeat has spread through the Allied world. I 
believe that this is not difficult to explain, but 
impossible to justify. I have sought, therefore, 
by an analysis of the situation to show the true 
basis of apprehension, the valid reasons in the 
past conduct of the war for the present pessimism, 
and in the last section of the book the dim out- 
lines, already distinguishable, of the victory the 
Allies will beyond doubt win. The true difficulty 
which most people now experience is the definite 
realization that certain conceptions about the 
method of winning the war and the character 
of victory have become during the last year im- 
possible of realization. I am prepared to go so 
far as to maintain that they never were founded 
in reason or expediency, but upon a misconcep- 
tion of the European and international situation 
the falsity of which the progress of the war has 
so clearly demonstrated. 

I feel that the postponement of Allied victory 
has been due partially to the belief that the 



PREFACE 

war would be won in time by non-military 
forces, like economic exhaustion or a democratic 
revolt in Germany. But it has primarily been 
due to the fact that the Allied strategy of vic- 
tory has been formulated to defeat the old Pan- 
Germanism, which was abandoned in the sec- 
ond year of the war, and has yet to reckon ade- 
quately with the newer and more brutal scheme 
which has taken its place. I feel that the Ger- 
mans have dealt with the Russian Revolution 
as a fact, while the Allies, in the main, have 
treated it as a hope deferred. The former ac- 
cordingly reconstructed their own policy to uti- 
lize the Revolution; the Allies have clung to 
their original strategy in the expectation that 
the co-operation of Russia might be again se- 
cured. The new Pan-Germanism and the 
Russian Revolution have altered, to my think- 
ing, the international equation for every coun- 
try in the world and have transformed the prob- 
lems of victory and of a permanent settlement. 
Much of my space is devoted, therefore, to a 
statement of the new Pan-Germanism, an analy- 
sis of its influence and of the Russian Revolution 
upon German and Allied objectives, upon the 
political and military situation, and upon the 
direct issue of the winning of the war. 

I hold that by the old European formulas the 
Allies cannot win, but I maintain that in the 
light of the new formulas, by which the world 
is now and henceforth will be controlled, the 
Allies have already won a victory of a scope 
and finality unparalleled in past wars. To 



PREFACE 

understand this transformation of Europe and 
of the world by the war itself and its effect 
upon our past notions and policies, is our first 
step toward the winning of the war. 

Victory indeed is to my thinking not really 
at stake. I see a new Europe in which the 
Central Empires have unfortunately increased 
their power and influence, solely because of the 
collapse of Russia. I also see a new world, 
truly international, controlled beyond perad- 
venture by what I think may be best described 
as the Atlantic Powers, an intra-continental, 
literally international combination of states, 
already possessed of the supremacy of the seas, 
of the bulk of the economic resources of the globe, 
of the willing allegiance of Africa and India, 
and which exemplify in their institutions the 
ideals of democracy, liberty, and law. And the 
new world will dominate the new Europe. We 
have only to understand the war to be opti- 
mistic about the future. Europe as we thought 
it was, the war has proved never did exist; 
Europe as the Allies first believed it would be- 
come is now impossible; but there is a new 
Europe and there is a new world, created by 
the war itself, and which, if not exactly what 
we meant to make them, will certainly serve the 
cause of democracy and of civilization more 
dependably, more conclusively, and more per- 
manently than our first notions about the win- 
ning of the war. Let us not reject the gifts the 
gods provide because they are not the expected 
answers to our prayers. 



BOOK I 
THE GERMAN MENACE 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 



THE NEW PAN-GERMANISM 

THERE is a new Europe and a new world, 
created by the war, and a new Pan-Ger- 
manism intent on the domination of both. It 
was born of the war, suckled in the fear of defeat, 
nourished in the expectation of dominion. Like 
the old, it is the product of Machiavellian craft 
and of Teutonic ruthlessness; it sees nothing too 
great for its aspiration, nothing too mean to be 
utilized for victory. It believes its ambition so 
lofty as to consecrate the baseness of its methods. 
From the slime and muck of merciless warfare it 
aims to build a new Kultur, dazzling in its purity 
and splendor, surpassing the glories of Athens 
and the achievements of the Renaissance. Out 
of the eater will come forth meat and out of the 
strong will come forth sweetness. For ingenuity, 
for intuitive grasp of European issues, and for 
downright villainy, it surpasses the original 
dreams of Mittel-Europa by as much as the latter 
transcended the victory over France in 1870 

3 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

and the creation of the Empire. Its menace 
lies in its method of fighting the war and renders 
the continuation of the conflict as serious a 
problem to meet as defeat itself. It portends no 
longer the conquest of Belgium, but its annihila- 
tion; it expects not merely the defeat of France, 
but the destruction of her economic and political 
strength for a generation, if not for all time. It 
will exact the utmost farthing and the last frac- 
tion of its pound of flesh during the war and after 
its conclusion. It sees in the war itself the golden 
opportunity for conquest, in its continuation the 
certainty of eventual victory, and in the manner 
of its prosecution the assurance of the destruction 
of its enemies. If the old Pan-Germanism en- 
tered the war stained with the disgrace of aggres- 
sion, the new will end it branded with the infamy 
of the strategy of defeat, compared with which 
the original sin against Belgium, the sinking of 
the Lusitania, and unrestricted submarine war- 
fare appear like acts of a mild and beneficent 
neutrality. 

This new Pan-Germanism, the strategy of the 
Allies did not at first adequately meet. Indeed, 
the postponement of Allied victory was due 
fundamentally, though not primarily, to their un- 
willingness to transform their own offensive and 
defensive measures, probably certain of success 
against the older Pan-Germanism, in order to 
meet a new German strategy of victory and de- 
feat, the existence of which was by no means as 
well demonstrated. To-day the reality of the 

new Pan-Germanism is no longer to be denied. 

4 



THE NEW PAN-GERMANISM 

The old Europe was destroyed by the Russian 
Revolution and from its ashes the Pan-Germanic 
Confederation rose — a European and interna- 
tional fact, unassailable to armies and imperme- 
able to diplomacy. At once the strategic equa- 
tion in Europe and in the world was transformed. 
Some Allied objectives became impossible of 
achievement, others undesirable, others inex- 
pedient. The effect of this single event upon the 
policies of both belligerent coalitions, upon the 
manner of conducting the war, upon its strategy, 
upon the character of the subsequent reorganiza- 
tion of Europe, was instantly impossible to exag- 
gerate or to ignore. In it, the new Pan-German- 
ism found an ally and a friend; from it, the 
Allies continued to hope, might come a reorgani- 
zation of Russia which would make unnecessary 
the thorough reconstruction of their objectives 
and the methods for attaining them which the 
final collapse of Russia would make imperative. 
The Germans continued the war upon the as- 
sumption that the old Russia was dead and the 
new Russia theirs. The Allies fought the cam- 
paigns of 1917 upon the belief that somehow the 
lame might be made to leap, the blind to see, 
and the dead brought to life. They were reluc- 
tant to conclude that no military victories could 
restore the old Russia or insure the strength and 
dependability of the new. Still less were they 
willing to admit that the Revolution had ce- 
mented, strengthened, and perpetuated the Pan- 
Germanic Confederation, already a fact as the 
result of the German victories in eastern Europe, 

5 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

and had consequently rendered inexpedient the 
reconstruction of Europe they had undertaken 
in 1914. 

But in time the conviction grew that Russia 
was not only lost to the Allies, but all too prob- 
ably won by the Germans — a Russia, to be sure, 
broken in strength, lacking administrative co- 
herence, and almost certainly condemned to half 
a century of civil turmoil and disorder, but none 
the less an economic ally of the first consequence 
and a political and diplomatic asset of no little 
potential value. The Germans had by no means 
gained all that the Allies had lost, but they had 
won enough to render problematical indeed the 
victory the Allies had set their hearts upon win- 
ning. Men began to be dimly conscious that the 
old victory could no longer be won by armies, 
that the new Pan-Germanism could not be de- 
stroyed by a strategy aimed at the defeat of the 
old. For the first time since the battle of the 
Marne the possibility of defeat gripped Allied 
hearts and minds with conviction. To many the 
mere thought that victory was not a mathemat- 
ical and logical certainty seemed almost equiva- 
lent to the announcement that the war was lost. 
The Allied world had been drunk with optimism, 
careless with confidence. Because victory seemed 
certain men had believed it inevitable; because 
the first German strategy of victory had been de- 
feated men assumed the problem solved and only 
its execution left to accomplish. When they 
saw themselves wrong in certain assumptions 
they had no reason to make, they cried out in an 

6 



THE NEW PAN-GERMANISM 

agony of apprehension that all was lost. But 
nothing worse was lost than a degree of self- 
confidence the Allies ought never to have enter- 
tained, a type of optimism the situation never 
warranted, an intellectual conception about the 
war and about the way it should be won which 
was created in its first year and which had since 
dominated public opinion in Europe and Amer- 
ica. Unquestionably the new anxiety and de- 
pression had its roots in the inability of the ma- 
jority to provide any satisfactory substitute. 

The Allies did not at first understand the war 
because they saw it in the light of the old diplo- 
macy and the old traditions, in the light, too, of 
the old Pan-Germanism, as a European and not 
an international fact. To them it was neces- 
sarily a struggle of European powers, fought on 
European soil, for continental aims and ends. 
It was a subjective rather than an objective fact. 
Nothing was more natural nor perhaps more re- 
grettable than the almost hypnotic effect of the 
West Front upon the statesmen and people of 
France and Great Britain. They saw the war 
as the military operations conducted by their 
husbands, sons, and brothers for the achieve- 
ment of the objectives nearest to their own 
hearts. They could not view it with detachment 
and impartiality, or study the campaigns in Po- 
land or Serbia with the same intensity as the 
shifts of position along the trench line in France. 
What mattered the victories of Hindenburg in 
Poland, so long as the Germans were held at 
Verdun? What mattered campaigns in Ru- 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

mania, so long as the war could not end until 
France had been reconquered and Alsace-Lor- 
raine occupied? Nor could they conceive that 
the battle for France might more expediently be 
fought in the east. Two parties, sharply aligned, 
appeared in the General Staffs, the Westerners 
and the Easterners, those who insisted upon 
fighting the war in France and those who be- 
lieved a more conclusive victory more cheaply to 
be had elsewhere. The political authorities de- 
cided for the west and the people accepted the 
decision without being fully conscious of all it 
involved. The result was a failure to see the 
war as a whole, a tendency to study it in detail 
rather than in perspective, to attach a value to 
the offensive in France far greater than the Ger- 
mans came to assign to the defense, to forget that 
the war might be lost in the east, and that it 
could be won in France only on the basis of as- 
sumptions and calculations by no means mathe- 
matically certain or dependable. The British, 
French, and American people saw the war out of 
focus, and ignored the interrelations and corre- 
lations of its parts. They did not realize that 
the Allied victories of consequence were not being 
won in France, nor that the Allied defeats of 
moment had not been suffered there. 

The progress of the war they did not grasp 
because they looked at it through the spectacles 
of an unquenchable optimism which refused to 
see the darker aspects of the problem, the lions in 
the path before the castle. Time was when the 
battle of the Marne was still gloriously new, 

8 



THE NEW PAN-GERMANISM 

when men congratulated one another on the dis- 
appearance of the German menace. It is to-day 
greater than ever, not because the Allies have not 
made progress toward victory, but because the 
scope of German ambition is greater than before. 
Optimism led the Allied people in general to ac- 
cept a picture of the Germans cowering in the 
trenches, chained to the guns, driven to the as- 
sault with whips, rioting for food, making fer- 
tilizer out of the bodies of their own dead — a 
nation easily to be beaten, a strategic problem 
which could have no terrors for a sane man. 
Optimism also concealed the indirect results of 
the otherwise brilliant diplomacy of the Allies 
upon the military campaign. There lay the root 
of the defeat in Italy. It also led men to believe 
that time would work on the side of the Allies and 
against the Germans, that a long war would be 
inevitably to the advantage of the former. They 
have been slow to wake to the fact that time 
was not working invariably in the Allies' favor 
and that it might not be to their advantage to 
prolong the war indefinitely. 

Victory was postponed because the defense of 
the Allies was not calculated to meet the offense 
of the Germans. For the latter the war has been 
a long series of diplomatic, political, and economic 
defeats; for the Allies it has been thus far a 
military failure, a term, by the way, which it is 
highly essential to analyze and understand, for 
it means merely that the Allied objectives are 
not as yet attained. A true victory for either 
side must comprise results of both natures. Ger- 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

many may win the war and lose it. The Allies 
may lose the war and win it, because it is fought 
not primarily for military results, but for its ef- 
fect upon the reorganization of Europe when the 
war is over. They have merely to understand 
the war to see that they have already won 
security, safety, and significant objectives far 
more important than those sketched in the first 
speeches of their statesmen. The war was from 
the outset an international fact, fought by Eu- 
ropean and non-European armies on the plains 
of France and Poland and in the mountains of the 
Balkans. There east met west and the struggle 
began for the maintenance of the old domination 
of the world by Europe. There could be but one 
result: the war destroyed the old Europe and 
emancipated the world. For the first time the 
independence of America, Asia, and Africa be- 
came a fact and no longer an aspiration. No 
Pan-Germanic victory in central and eastern 
Europe can restore the domination of the world 
by the old European conference of the Six 
Powers. No Allied defeat can alter the vital fact 
that if France, Great Britain, and Italy may lose 
a portion of their old heritage in Europe, they 
have already won a commanding international 
position as the European members of the alliance 
of the Atlantic Powers. 

The Allies have yet to confess to themselves 
that the war has solved their problems and has 
already created for the future an invulnerable 
defense. Forces older than armies and thrice as 

potent have worked on their behalf and victory 

10 



THE NEW PAN-GERMANISM 

stands ready to their hands, needing merely to be 
comprehended, organized, and utilized, to be in- 
fallible and final. If the war has destroyed old 
forces in Europe and created a new Central 
Europe, it has already by its operation created an 
essential and adequate counterpoise in the alli- 
ance of the Atlantic Powers. The new land 
power, unhappily a fact, finds itself face to face 
with a new sea power, only too happily as real, 
and more powerful, more firmly ensconced in an 
international position stronger than that of the 
Central Empires. The war is already won. 
France, Belgium, Italy, Great Britain, are al- 
ready safe, even though the measures originally 
intended to insure their future are now inexpedi- 
ent and perhaps impossible. 

Nothing is more essential than that the war 
should be continued not merely in the light of its 
origin, but in view of the effect of its progress 
upon its original objectives and upon the essen- 
tial reconstruction of Europe when peace shall 
be restored. What remains to be done, the ex- 
penditure of blood, time, and energy necessary 
to accomplish it, will depend partly upon what 
has already been done, but chiefly on what we 
find it desirable or imperative to achieve. For 
the American people, an analysis of the new Pan- 
Germanism, of the reasons for the postponement 
of Allied victory, and of the character of the new 
Allied objectives, is of paramount importance. 
They must pay the price of victory and they must 
calculate its cost with accuracy if their effort is 

not to fall short of the intended effect. The 
2 11 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

gravity of the crisis will in no way shake their 
determination. It will steel their hearts, rouse 
their courage, deepen their convictions in the 
necessity of victory. Only one thing can cause 
an Allied defeat — a failure of conviction on the 
part of the British, French, and American people 
of the greatness of the cause of democracy, of the 
splendor of the moral crusade upon which they 
have enlisted, of the necessity of victory to make 
safe the world for posterity. 



II 

THE ORIGINAL GERMAN STRATEGY OF VICTORY 

THE most superficial study of the German 
strategy of victory must begin with Ger- 
many's fundamental strategic position on the 
great plain sloping from the Jura, the Alps, and 
the Carpathians to the Atlantic, the North Sea, 
and the Baltic. There no great mountain bar- 
riers delimit political areas or prevent military 
movements. Germany holds a central position 
without well-demarcated frontiers between her, 
Belgium, Holland, and France on the west, nor 
yet between her and Poland on the east. No 
position could well be more difficult to defend, 
because a simultaneous attack is possible upon 
two very vulnerable frontiers. This strategic 
difficulty has been more than doubled by the fact 
that both frontiers were occupied by two power- 
ful states, the one administratively as capable as 
any in Europe, but with a man power less con- 
siderable than that of Germany and with eco- 
nomic resources somewhat inferior; the other of 
vast potential man power, of incalculable re- 
sources, but with an administrative and military 
organization unduly weak. This fact of the 

13 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

central position has determined for over a cen- 
tury the character and type of German political, 
administrative, and military organization. 

She has been long awake to the fact that the 
swelling numbers and potential economic re- 
sources of her possible enemies can never be 
permanently met by brute force, but long study 
has made her more and more confident that she 
could safely rely for defense upon the doctrine of 
relativity: a sufficiently mobile army of exactly 
the right ratio of strength to its enemies could 
utilize the central position for a defensive more 
than adequate to offset an enormous superiority 
in numbers. The same army might fight on both 
fronts, the railways easily transporting it from 
one to the other. Each section would always be 
in contact with others, whereas their opponents 
would invariably be unable to campaign to- 
gether because separated by Germany herself. 
But it was idle to suppose that the strategic 
problem of a war on two fronts could be solved 
by an army organization or by an administrative 
and economic fabric extemporized after the crisis 
had risen. The necessary key to any defensive 
war would be the adequacy of previous prepara- 
tion; that alone would determine the issue. 

Security, however, could never result from 
purely defensive dispositions. It must become 
impossible for enemies to challenge German se- 
curity, to undertake war against her with any 
prospect of success. For half a century the 
German diplomatic and political tradition has 
demanded an international independence so def- 

14 



ORIGINAL GERMAN STRATEGY OF VICTORY 

initely sustained by strategic and military ad- 
vantages that no foreign nation could possibly 
possess adequate power to disturb or threaten it. 
The Germans have been entirely conscious that 
this would necessarily involve the acquisition of 
territory not theirs. The German military tradi- 
tion for half a century has held that Germany 
could expect to win this adequate defensive posi- 
tion in Europe only through an offensive war. 
Literal international independence, then — and 
could any German demand less? — would involve 
conquest; national security — and could any Ger- 
man deny its necessity? — must be founded in 
aggression. 

Both would necessitate aid; both could suc- 
ceed only if the Germanic race in Europe could 
be welded into one great political, administrative, 
and economic entity, with control of natural 
strategic defenses, with possession of approaches 
to the great international waterways, and of a 
merchant marine and fleet adequate to carry and 
protect the volume of trade which this new and 
powerful state would send throughout the world. 
Austria and Germany must therefore stand 
shoulder to shoulder, united by bonds of lan- 
guage, blood, tradition, loyalty to Deutschtum, 
too strong to be sundered; bound together by 
obvious necessities of defense, by definite mutual 
interests obtainable only by concerted action. 
With them must be aligned Hungary, the Balkan 
states, Turkey, and Persia. 

Thus from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf 
would stretch a Central Europe whose strategic 

15 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

position, military organization, administrative ef- 
ficiency, and economic potentiality would render 
it forever safe from the aggressive jealousy of 
the older sea power and of those "partners in 
iniquity," Russia and France. So great an en- 
tity would wield the necessary political and 
military force to take and retain the natural 
outlets of its trade — Belgium, Denmark, the 
Adriatic, Constantinople, the Persian Gulf. Its 
broad fields and complex industrial fabric would 
sustain in continued prosperity and comfort an 
ever-increasing population, which would be able 
to remain at home and thus meet for years to 
come the menace of Russian growth in popula- 
tion and economic strength. Within itself — in 
undeveloped Hungary, in the Tyrol, in the Bal- 
kans — would lie markets more valuable far than 
the fabled islands of the seas and the much- 
vaunted Morocco and Algiers. Within its con- 
trol would be the greatest economic opportunity 
of the ages, the systematic exploitation of the 
garden spot of antiquity, the seat of empires in 
those remote days when Pharaohs and prophets 
walked the earth. The German and Austrian 
armies, the German and Austrian fleets and mer- 
chant marines, the German industrial and finan- 
cial fabric, the fields of Hungary, Rumania, 
Mesopotamia, the metals of the Alps and the 
Carpathians, would be the secure foundation of 
an empire exceeding the visions of the Caesars, 
the dreams of Charlemagne and of Charles V. 
Thus would prosperity and security be assured 
for remote posterity. Thus would Deutschtum 

16 



ORIGINAL GERMAN STRATEGY OF VICTORY 

and Kultur guide the faltering steps of European 
and Asiatic civilization. 

The Germans, however, had become clearly 
conscious that the creation of such an invulner- 
able defense involved something far more com- 
plex than a victorious sweep across France to the 
gates of Paris, more even than a complete vic- 
tory on land and sea over their enemies. It in- 
volved the creation of a confederation of states 
which must become the controlling factor in 
international politics. It involved, in the next 
place, the ability of this confederation to win 
a victory over one or all of its enemies and to 
extend its authority and dominion into Asia and 
Africa. It further assumed the feasibility of 
maintaining control and of preserving its newly 
won supremacy intact from the subsequent as- 
saults of internal as well as external foes. Nor 
has the most ardent champion of Deutschtum, 
however conservative his Pan-Germanic frenzy, 
dreamed that this new confederation could be 
created without war with the "vandals and vam- 
pires" already in control of the world's highways 
and market areas. As to the expediency of be- 
ginning the war at one date rather than another, 
debate has raged in Germany and Austria. As 
to its necessity, there has long been unanimity. 
Its character, too, would depend necessarily upon 
the strategic positions already held by the Cen- 
tral Empires, would be further determined by 
those necessarily to be acquired during the war 
or at the peace, and would also be conditioned 
upon the degree of effective resistance to be ex- 

17 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

pected from possible opponents. The strategic 
problem, the German High Command long ago 
determined, was neither constant nor fixed. 
Victory might conceivably fail to win the great 
objective, while, on the other hand, a war prop- 
erly conducted from a military point of view 
might result in vast gains, even though an event- 
ual military defeat at the hands of superior num- 
bers might be suffered. Never should the ob- 
jective of the war be forgotten while fighting it, 
but never, on the other hand, should mere 
diplomatic and political considerations be al- 
lowed to alter the essential character of military 
campaigns. 

For such an offensive war against France and 
Russia, the strategic positions already held by 
the Central Empires and their allies were of the 
greatest potency. They held in Alsace-Lorraine 
the important approaches on Paris from the east 
and flanked any French assault upon Germany 
through Belgium on the north or through Switzer- 
land on the south. Moreover, the approaches 
to both Switzerland and Belgium were in Ger- 
man hands. She stood on the frontiers of both, 
while the French and English armies had long 
distances to go. The defensive position in the 
west was invulnerable. The offensive position 
held forth every expectation of speedy victory, 
for the superior mobility and the swifter mobili- 
zation of the German army would render these 
strategic factors doubly potent. 

In the east, the German High Command saw 
regretfully that the truly vital factor, Warsaw, 

18 



ORIGINAL GERMAN STRATEGY OF VICTORY 

was in Russian hands, but they knew that East 
Prussia and Cracow effectively flanked its ap- 
proaches and tended to rob an assault upon Ber- 
lin of real danger unless delivered with the full 
strength of the Russian army. South of Cracow, 
the Carpathians and the Balkans themselves pre- 
vented any effective attack on the rear. Bul- 
garia would neutralize Serbia; Rumania was al- 
ready bound to the Central Powers by secret 
treaty; the Turk's position at Constantinople 
and Adrianople was immensely strong and had 
been thoroughly tested during the recent Balkan 
wars. If Italy should remain true to the Triple 
Alliance, she would then be able to assail France 
in the rear or dispose promptly of Serbia. If she 
remained neutral, the rear would still be safe. 
If she became hostile, the great offensive positions 
in the Trentino, on the Isonzo and the Carso were 
in Austrian hands. Furthermore, the adminis- 
trative and military inefficiency of the Italians, 
Serbians, and Rumanians could be counted upon 
to deprive of real power any campaigns which the 
diplomacy of France and Great Britain might 
induce them to make. 

The essential strategic problems lay in the 
north on both fronts, neither of which singly was 
dangerous, but the combination of which was 
alarming. At all odds simultaneous attacks in 
force on both fronts must be prevented. If 
possible, measures should be taken to prevent 
any attack from being delivered on either front 
in effective force. The whole strategy of victory 
would necessarily be conditioned by these two 

19 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

considerations and all analyses led to the same 
conclusion: Germany and Austria must never 
wait to be attacked; they must take the offensive 
and take it at an unexpected moment. The 
element of surprise, the element of time, would 
be decisive for defense and offense alike; both 
involved the taking of the initiative by Germany. 
A prompt offensive on one front should crush one 
antagonist before the other could appear in 
strength and would render the final victory over 
the latter conclusive. The slow mobilization of 
the Russian army dictated a first and definitive 
blow at France which should either crush the 
French army outright or, at the least, throw it 
upon the defensive far within French territory and 
in as disadvantageous a position as possible. Both 
must be attempted; both might succeed; both 
could not fail. 

Inasmuch, however, as the essence of the blow 
was to be its surprise and its rapidity, it must be 
delivered through Belgium, for, while the posi- 
tions in Alsace-Lorraine were stronger, the French 
defensive work had there been more capable, the 
distance to Paris was somewhat greater, and the 
possibilities of surprise infinitely less. The ad- 
vance from Belgium might outflank and crush 
the entire French army, might succeed in carry- 
ing Paris in the first great rush; but two other 
considerations of greater significance determined 
German strategy. The French in Alsace-Lor- 
raine were already in possession of their defenses; 
their true frontier in Belgium, on the other hand, 

they could occupy only by a breach of neutrality 

20 



ORIGINAL GERMAN STRATEGY OF VICTORY 

and only at the cost of much time. The Belgian 
drive would almost infallibly place the French 
upon the defensive far within their own lines 
and at a distinct disadvantage, Germany would 
at once come into possession of the Belgian in- 
dustrial centers; the whole Belgian population 
would become potential workers and would be 
added to Germany's economic assets. The 
French iron and coal areas, the great French in- 
dustrial centers in the northern provinces, the 
rich agricultural district of northern France, 
would furthermore be brought within the Ger- 
man lines. Thus the French would find them- 
selves facing a great economic problem at the out- 
set whose solution might present such difficulties 
as to cripple their first defense and lead to ir- 
retrievable disaster. At the best they must take 
time to organize an adequate defense and would 
certainly find an offensive difficult for many 
months. 

For Germany the advantages of campaigning 
in the west were no less conclusive than the dis- 
advantages imposed upon the French. The 
Westphalian coal-fields, upon which the German 
army must necessarily depend, the great iron- 
mines in the province of Lorraine and along the 
French Meuse Valley, had already located next 
to the battle-field the vast factories created by 
Germany during half a century expressly to wage 
this war. Transportation difficulties would liter- 
ally be minimized. The haul to the army for 
the railroads was the shortest possible, while the 

Rhine and the interlocking system of canals to 

21 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

the Westphalian coal-fields made adequate water 
transportation simple and cheap. The operation 
of maintenance might be completed in a literal 
minimum of time, while the location made pos- 
sible the maximum of preparation in advance for 
the Germans and the minimum for the French. 
Once the French had been beaten or forced 
upon the defensive, the Germans might then 
shift to the east front the great bulk of the 
troops to deal with Russia, the true enemy, the 
dangerous enemy, of whom they must make 
short, prompt, and conclusive work. The de- 
struction of the Russian army must be their ob- 
ject, not the conquest of territory. True, it 
would be to Germany's advantage to occupy 
Warsaw and its strategic approaches, but the 
great campaigns of Napoleon against Moscow, 
the Crimean War, and the valiant work of Gen- 
eral Winter must be remembered. It would be 
impossible to hold Russian territory during the 
war without an immense sacrifice of transporta- 
tion facilities and the chances of retaining that 
territory permanently after the treaty of peace 
were exceedingly slight. Nor would such ter- 
ritorial gains be of value, for the war was not to 
be fought with any idea of adding to German 
territory in the east. Gains in the south and 
southeast in the Balkans, along the Adriatic, in 
the Danube Valley, in Asia Minor, were essential, 
but were either already in the hands of the 
Central Empires or their allies or could easily 
be occupied once interference from France and 
Russia was forestalled. The war was to be fought 

22 



ORIGINAL GERMAN STRATEGY OF VICTORY 

in the north, in France and Poland, not because 
territory was desired of either, but to extort 
their consent to the formal organization of the 
Pan-Germanic Confederation — Mittel - Europa. 
Victory in the north would make campaigns else- 
where superfluous. The original German strategy 
of victory certainly contemplated no serious war- 
fare in the south and southeast. 

At its best, the strategic problem was ab- 
surdly easy: the French ought to be thrown at 
once upon the defensive, Russia easily annihilated, 
and the French then promptly brought to terms. 
At its worst, victory was by no means difficult 
to predict. The first rush through Belgium, in- 
deed, might be expected to bring Great Britain 
into the war. Whatever delusions on this point 
were entertained by civilians in Germany or even 
by the diplomatic corps, the High Command of 
the army certainly made its dispositions with the 
full expectation of prompt British assistance. 
The economic disadvantages they realized would 
be serious but not insurmountable. Undoubt- 
edly a blockade of Germany by the British fleet 
might be instantly expected, but would be offset 
by the blockade of Russia, which would be as 
instantly created by the German fleet at Kiel 
and by the possession of Constantinople by the 
Turk. Such loss of access to the great neutral 
markets of the world might be serious, and it was 
doubly unfortunate that no adequate supplies of 
materials usually imported could be collected in 
advance without giving practical notice of the 
intention to declare war and thus losing the ele- 

23 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

ment of surprise, if not the power of choosing 
the moment for the first aggressive assault. 
These were advantages by no means to be risked 
at a price which might never need to be paid. 

The Germans found it difficult to believe that 
the British blockade could be truly effective. 
Not only must the sea be closed, but the land 
frontiers as well. Not only must the British 
Government issue edicts and send out cruisers 
to capture the German merchant marine, but 
they must control their own country and prevent 
"the celebrated British selfishness and venality" 
from supplying the Germans, as it had Napoleon's 
Continental Empire at the time when the Eng- 
lish blockade broke down of its own weight. 
Surely supplies would come through Holland, 
Scandinavia, Greece, and Italy, if Italy should re- 
main neutral. Great Britain could close the 
neutral countries to Germany only by shutting 
off their imports altogether, and the measures 
which would enforce this ruling would most prob- 
ably drive the neutrals into German arms. One 
way or another supplies would arrive in sufficient 
quantities to solve the military problem. The re- 
sults of British aid in the field were not expected 
to be conclusive. The troops actually under 
arms were too few, too poor in quality, to affect 
the military issue in the first months of the war, 
and it was thought hardly probable that the 
French could hold out until an adequate British 
army could be trained. There were even strong 
doubts of the ability of Great Britain to create an 
effective army, for the importance of artillery 

24 



ORIGINAL GERMAN STRATEGY OF VICTORY 

work in the coming war was thoroughly appre- 
ciated by the Germans, and the great value of 
staff-officers and the difficulty of educating them 
in a hurry was even better understood. Thus 
the probable opposition on the West Front was 
thought not powerful enough to interfere with the 
prompt execution of German plans. 

The lack of sustained power in the Russian 
assault in the east was believed inevitable. 
Russia possessed no adequate supply of officers, 
no industrial fabric able to support the war, and 
without both the German High Command could 
not predicate Russian success. The German fleet 
could insure the difficulty of shipment to Russia 
by France and Great Britain of the necessary 
munitions for a long war. The first Russian at- 
tack might be dangerous, but could be met and 
could hardly be repeated. In addition, the mal- 
contents in France and England would weaken 
and delay the effective preparations for war; 
both English and French administrators might be 
expected to blunder; while the venality of the 
Russian officials was traditional. Was it not 
also probable that both the English and the 
French people would rebel against the stern dis- 
cipline, both economic and military, needed to 
make resistance effective or prolonged? 

Nevertheless, it was deemed highly essential 
that the diplomatic preparations for the war 
should limit the military objectives before the 
army as far as possible, and that in particular 
an issue should be chosen upon which to begin 
the war which would invite co-operation by 

25 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

as few possible enemies as might be. Such con- 
siderations dictated a beginning of the war in 
the Balkans, because neither France nor Great 
Britain possessed there direct interests, and 
might therefore be greatly handicapped in pre- 
senting an issue to their representative bodies 
upon which they could induce them to vote 
a declaration of war. No doubt France was 
bound by treaty to Russia, but, if Great Britain 
should stand neutral, a sweeping victory was 
certain and the war would be short. It would 
then become possible to deal directly and effec- 
tively with Great Britain. 

The Balkan issue, nevertheless, was precisely 
that upon which Italy had declared from the 
first that the Triple Alliance would not bind her. 
It was not thought that her entry into the war 
could greatly change the situation. The Italian 
army was weak, and the country possessed no 
coal, no iron, and no adequate industrial fabric. 
The Trentino and Isonzo fronts were immensely 
strong and an Italian offensive would be a burden 
rather than an asset to her allies. Her neu- 
trality was far more desirable than her aid, 
which would similarly be a burden for the Ger- 
man economic fabric to bear. In no case could 
she be counted upon, for her long and vulnerable 
coast-line placed her at the mercy of the French 
and British fleets, a fact Bismarck had not per- 
haps reckoned with when she was admitted to 
the Triple Alliance, but one promptly appre- 
ciated after her adhesion was made public. 

Of all issues, none was so simple to raise, nor 

26 



ORIGINAL GERMAN STRATEGY OF VICTORY 

so desirable to open, as that of Serbia. The 
quarrels were of long standing; an issue suitable 
for war could be produced at any moment, and 
would possess the infinite advantage of uniting 
Austria-Hungary in the ardent prosecution of 
the war. Certainly the Serbian issue was the 
one in the Balkans of least significance to Russia, 
and that most agreeable to the Rumanians, the 
Bulgarians, and the Greeks. So far as the 
British and the French were concerned, it was 
the most desirable because of the least signifi- 
cance. Its strategic position was, moreover, of 
real importance to the Central Powers. It was 
the necessary road to Saloniki; its economic 
and political control would be an essential factor 
in the future creation of Mittel-Europa. 

If no war should ensue, a great gain would 
have been won. If war did result, the issue 
would have been raised in the most advantage- 
ous way and the campaign begun at the point 
of minimum danger, the one easiest to defend, 
easiest to conquer, and whose value after con- 
quest would be immense, for Belgrade and Nish 
would control the great continental road to Bul- 
garia and Constantinople, and in addition the 
entire navigation of the Danube. It was, so far 
as a European war was concerned, the only weak 
point in the entire southern line, the secure 
method of launching the one offensive against 
Austria which might be truly dangerous, a 
campaign north from Saloniki. The murder of 
the Archduke in June, 1914, otherwise unfortu- 
nate, produced, therefore, precisely the issue 

3 27 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

needed for the great war, already decided upon 
at Berlin and Vienna certainly as early as the 
May preceding. The bulletins which went forth 
from the High Command to the German people 
during August spoke again and again the entire 
truth: the execution of the long-prearranged 
plans was proceeding day by day as had been 
expected. " Deutschland Tiber AUes!" "The 
Day" had dawned! The strategy of victory 
had been successful. The task before the army 
was reduced to a minimum. 



Ill 

THE INVISIBLE ARMY 

THE German strategy of victory never contem- 
plated a war fought solely in the trenches. 
The war should be fought in the counting-house 
and in the factory, in the fields and on the high 
seas. The Invisible Army should weaken the 
force of the defense the German army and fleet 
must overcome, and its work would be, there- 
fore, neither political nor diplomatic, but mili- 
tary; not a permissive, but an essential element 
in victory. By the side of every Allied general, 
by the side of every Allied statesman, should 
stand an invisible soldier of the German Empire. 
In every Allied and neutral counting-house, in 
every railroad and steamship office, should be 
an invisible servant of the German people. 
The weakness of Germany's foes would be one 
of her most powerful weapons; her greatest 
strength would lie in her knowledge of her ad- 
versaries and of their strength, of their chronic 
difficulties, and of those ailments which were 
capable of stimulation. Indeed, the work of 
the Invisible Army would be no less an essential 
element in the German strategy of victory than 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

that of the first army in the trenches and would 
be as indispensable to the final achievement 
as battles and campaigns. For victory itself 
would be no mere military achievement. It was 
expected that the Invisible Army would paralyze 
enemies and neutrals alike and lighten perhaps 
beyond estimation the task before the army in 
the field. 

But the adequacy of German military organi- 
zation would be a relative and not a positive 
fact. Her strategic location, the central position 
between France and Russia, compelled her to 
create an army whose size and efficiency must 
maintain a definite ratio with that of the armies 
of France, Russia, and Great Britain. Both 
these issues of size and efficiency were relative; 
both again were entirely dependent for adequacy 
upon the economic and administrative machinery 
behind them; neither could be extemporized in a 
moment; and both must therefore be the result 
of scientific calculation, based upon accurate and 
complete information about the military equip- 
ment and strategy of all possible enemies. This 
knowledge the Invisible Army must provide in 
advance and such knowledge it must continue to 
supply throughout the war. German campaigns 
and policies must be the result of scientific calcu- 
lation or their success would be problematic and 
the issue of the war constantly in doubt. Vic- 
tory itself would depend less on available forces 
ready at the declaration of war than upon the 
force Germany should eventually produce in its 
mathematical relation to the forces which other 

30 



THE INVISIBLE ARMY 

nations might eventually draft. That ratio 
must be in no sense a matter of guesswork. Vic- 
tory could be predicted only if it proceeded from 
knowledge. 

The Invisible Army must also weaken the 
fighting strength of such armies as the enemy na- 
tions might maintain. They must secure knowl- 
edge beforehand of the plans of campaign; in- 
formation about the personnel of the staff would, 
of course, always be valuable, and might, as in 
the Franco-Prussian War, prove on occasions 
decisive. The weak points in the French line 
would be known, the weak men in the French 
army, the strong men, those who could be bought 
or whose relatives could be influenced. But 
more reliance was placed on the ability of the 
Invisible Army to interfere with adequate eco- 
nomic preparations both in enemy countries 
and in those neutral states which might attempt 
to assist them. The syndicalist movement in 
France, the trade-union movement in Great 
Britain, could be utilized. Strikes might be ar- 
ranged and thus the work of preparation delayed. 
Then the finished product itself might be de- 
stroyed, factories blown up with bombs, ships 
sunk by mines. Contracts could be signed with 
factories capable of war-work which would thus 
keep men out of government employment. Sup- 
plies of all raw materials, wherever they could 
be found, should be purchased and stored and 
thus kept out of the hands of Germany's enemies. 

Political interference on a large scale would 
also be of value. French and Russian officials 

31 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

were believed generally susceptible to purchase. 
The "muddling through," famous in England, 
could be easily assisted and prolonged. The 
pacifists in all countries could be urged to organize 
and espouse propaganda which could scarcely 
fail to hinder adequate preparation for the war. 
The extent of the pacifist movement in England, 
and in the United States in particular, might be 
considered one of Germany's assets. Conscien- 
tious objectors were sure to appear in all coun- 
tries; the traditional hostility in England to any- 
thing resembling compulsory military service 
was very old. All should be utilized for Ger- 
many's advantage. 

Nor was it to be forgotten that political dis- 
union, disloyalty, actual revolt, would work pow- 
erfully in favor of Germany and weaken an army 
on the west or east front. The British Empire 
the Pan-Germanists had always declared a weak 
chain. The self-governing colonies had already 
exhibited tendencies toward independence. Could 
not the French in Canada be stimulated to 
undertake some movement which would inter- 
fere with the prosecution of the war? Could 
not the Boers in South Africa be urged to revolt? 
Could not some sort of a national revolution in 
favor of home rule in Ireland be created? Then 
there was Egypt, where a flourishing national 
movement already existed; there was India, 
where already were many anxious for political 
independence from Great Britain; Persia, whose 
national movement had just been crushed; to 
say nothing of the Finns and Poles, who had 

32 



THE INVISIBLE ARMY 

been agitating for freedom from Russia for many 
generations. Was it not probable that the Eng- 
lish and French colonial dominion in Africa 
could be upset or at least thrown into turmoil 
by a Holy War declared in the name of Pan- 
Islam? In the Pacific was Japan, a new nation, 
jealous of all European countries, and it was the 
German purpose to encourage its suspicions of 
Russia, Great Britain, and the United States. 
That the success of any of these movements 
would have definitive military results was more 
than probable. That they would at least delay 
adequate preparation was certain, and in a coun- 
try like Great Britain, where so much was to be 
done, delays of any sort, kind, or description 
would be of the utmost significance. 

But it was in the neutral states that the 
greatest achievements of the Invisible Army 
were thought possible. The neutrals must be 
carried in favor of Germany, if it were humanly 
possible. The importance of the continuance of 
indirect trade through Holland, Denmark, Nor- 
way, and Sweden could scarcely be exaggerated 
if the English blockade became in the slightest 
degree effective. They would then be Germany's 
only possible access to the outside world. 
Through them and from them must come the 
supplies of raw materials, nickel, copper, wool, 
rubber, and medicines of which Germany did not 
possess an indigenous supply. Italy should be- 
come neutral; it was highly important that she 
should remain neutral and to this end every 
possible energy would be bent. If Great Britain 

33 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

should enter the war and should at once under- 
take to blockade Germany, as was deemed 
practically certain by the High Command, it 
would involve, of course, interference with neu- 
tral trade, declarations regarding contraband and 
international law on the sea to which neutrals 
could scarcely fail to raise serious objections. 
These might be nursed, and result, as in previous 
decades, in concerted action by the neutrals 
against the sea power, which would in fact be 
action directly in Germany's favor. 

The greatest of all neutral states, in posi- 
tion, in population, and in resources — the 
United States — must be kept pro-German in 
order that its great economic resources should 
not be placed at the disposal of the Allies. If it 
should insist upon the privilege generally allowed 
of the sale of munitions by private citizens to 
belligerent countries, the manufacture might be 
interfered with in a variety of ways and move- 
ments might be stimulated which would em- 
ploy the munitions at home. Preparedness, for 
instance, was in the air and could easily be de- 
veloped; suspicions of Japan could be excited; 
trouble with Mexico had been brewing for several 
years. An invasion of Mexico with any sort of 
force might occupy the military resources for 
years to come, because the Mexicans could be 
supplied from Germany, could be trained and 
led by German officers, and an effective resistance 
thus provided. Those in the United States who 
have been in the months past displeased with 
the President for his failure to act regarding 

34 



THE INVISIBLE ARMY 

preparedness and Mexico, must remember that 
he knew what all of us did not, the extent of the 
German propaganda in this country. The Mexi- 
can troubles, the anti-Japanese crusade, the 
pacifist movement, were largely stimulated by 
German agents. At the best, no one could be 
sure that an outbreak was not their work and 
did not reflect public sentiment in the United 
States. It was long doubtful whether to further 
any movement in which the German agents 
showed interest would not be the surest way to 
defeat the fundamental interests and policies of 
this country. Upon this point the President's 
wisdom has been conspicuously vindicated. 

Thus for the Germans the war was a question 
of ratios and exact calculations, a matter of 
relativity, capable of scientific demonstration 
from the information provided by the Invisible 
Army. None the less, the first campaigns were 
based upon calculations in which were a good 
deal of assumption and a minimum of science. 
They were forced to guess at the number of 
their adversaries. And they guessed wrong! 



IV 

DISAGREEABLE COMPLICATIONS 

THE first six months of the war were not 
spent when the Germans realized that the 
original German strategy of victory could 
scarcely be expected to achieve a decision. At 
the end of the first year they realized that by it 
no decision at all could be won. The problem 
of victory was at its maximum, not at its mini- 
mum. All their former dispositions had become 
successively inapplicable to the situation. One 
after another disagreeable eventualities had oc- 
curred, none of them perhaps surprises to the 
leaders of the state, but many of them believed 
entirely unlikely. None of them were events 
which had not already been foreseen, although 
most were of a nature which it had been hoped it 
would never be necessary to provide for. Un- 
doubtedly they complicated the situation im- 
mensely. Undoubtedly victory became, to say 
the least, problematic. 

The heroic resistance of Liege and of the Bel- 
gian army in the first three days of the war gained 
precious days and hours for the French, un- 
questionably checked the first drive of the Ger- 

36 



DISAGREEABLE COMPLICATIONS 

mans, and robbed it of much of its initial velocity. 
The French army was beyond doubt saved from 
immediate disaster, even though at an immense 
price to the Belgian army, to the Belgian people, 
and to their splendid cities, fair towns, and vil- 
lages. Then Great Britain, not deceived by the 
issue of Serbia into the belief that her interests 
were in no sense menaced, voted to enter the 
war, a vote which it had been believed in Berlin 
would occur, but which it had been earnestly 
hoped might be avoided. It meant certainly the 
addition to the resources of Germany's enemies 
of the sea power, of vast numbers of troops, of 
the international credit structure, and of vast 
economic resources. And there was furthermore 
to be remembered Great Britain's habit of stick- 
ing out long wars, her habit of being on the win- 
ning side when the war ended. Nor was the 
promptitude with which the British fleet swept 
the seas clear of German commerce and insti- 
tuted a rigorous and effective blockade less dis- 
agreeable and surprising. The instant loyalty 
of the Empire, the immediate thronging to the 
recruiting-offices of Canadians and Australians, 
the offer of the entire resources of the colonies 
to the mother country for the duration of the 
war — this was indeed unexpected. On the other 
hand, Italy remained, as was thought probable, 
neutral. Denmark, Holland, and the Scandi- 
navian countries, all of them vital to Germany 
as supply depots, as intermediaries for economic 
communication throughout the war, took the at- 
titude expected of them. But even while the 

37 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

German armies were rushing toward Paris, it was 
seen in Berlin that complications of the utmost 
seriousness had already arisen and that victory 
would certainly be no matter of six weeks or 
three months. 

As the armies neared Paris and the Fabian 
strategy of Joffre drew the British and French 
armies back in a rapid and effective retreat — 
back, back, leaving Paris before the Germans — 
the latter began to realize that the French did not 
propose to meet them in battle and to risk defeat. 
Scarcely any single blow to the German strategy 
could have been more serious than this. If the 
war was to be short, the French must stand still 
and be beaten, for it was impossible that the 
Germans should pursue them through France. 
The right wing was already seriously extended. 
The landing of a British force in Belgium or on 
the French coast might easily outflank it. A 
retreat became necessary to those dispositions 
already made with the aid of the Invisible Army 
in the long years preceding. 

But it took place with a haste and a precipita- 
tion which was not provided for in the German 
plans. The moment when the Germans them- 
selves decided to retreat from before Paris, to 
draw in their dangerously extended lines and 
to protect the right wing, Joffre undertook an 
attack and the great battle of the Marne cost 
the Germans heavily in men, restored the morale 
of the French army, of the French and the 
British people, and, in particular, raised to a 
high pitch their expectations of a successful out- 

38 



DISAGREEABLE COMPLICATIONS 

come of the war and an early conclusion. The 
unexpected had happened. The dash upon Paris 
had failed. The French had won a victory. 
The original German strategy was already beaten. 
And now, in September, weeks before they had 
been expected, the Russians took the offensive 
in East Prussia in great force. It was not at all 
that these hostilities had not been reckoned 
with or that all had not been in a measure pro- 
vided for, which shook German confidence. It 
had been earnestly believed that it would not 
be necessary to provide for so many of them. 

Then came a blow almost greater than any 
suffered by the Germans throughout the war. 
The Imperial Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, 
speaking formally to the Reichstag at the very 
beginning of the war, at a time when every word 
counted both in Germany and in enemy and 
neutral countries, saw fit to make a fatal admis- 
sion, to declare that the march through Belgium 
was a definite breach of a treaty obligation and 
involved a moral responsibility upon the German 
people to repair the damage done and to restore 
Belgian independence at the end of the war. 
This raised promptly and in an unexpected way 
the moral issue. Was the war right? Had the 
Germans themselves been the aggressors? Had 
they an adequate cause for the war? Fiercely 
and promptly was the battle fought in pamphlets, 
in speeches, in public assemblies throughout 
Europe and in the neutral countries. Every- 
where outside of the Central Empires and the 
reach of their censorship, the moral issue was 

39 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

squarely and promptly decided against Germany. 
The neutrals at once, almost without hesitation, 
decided that the invasion of Belgium was a 
shocking crime against the law of nations. The 
German admission of the aggressive assault on 
Belgium at once animated their foes with a 
consciousness of rectitude, led to the proclama- 
tion of the war as a great moral crusade, and, 
to the discouragement and annoyance of the 
German people, to prompt accusations of bar- 
barism. It was a great victory for the Allies, 
an unforeseen victory, won with a promptitude 
and finality which surpassed all conceivable ex- 
pectations. It was a blow to the German cause 
such as ten battles and campaigns could not have 
successfully dealt. It was a failure that could 
neither be retrieved nor offset. It promptly 
placed at the disposition of Germany's enemies 
the entire resources of most neutral countries. 

Immediately the effects were apparent. Con- 
tracts were placed in the United States with 
private firms by all members of the Triple En- 
tente for the manufacture of war munitions, 
shoes, clothing, supplies, all on a great scale, 
vast beyond any original contemplation. Prac- 
tically, it meant the addition of the economic 
resources of the United States to those of the 
Allies to such an extent as their organization by 
private enterprise was possible. Nor was the 
wide campaign of the German Invisible Army 
to interfere nor the frantic endeavors of the 
German-Americans able to avail anything. 

Meanwhile the war proceeded in France. It 

40 



DISAGREEABLE COMPLICATIONS 

developed speedily a proposition by no means new 
to the Germans and by no means pleasant: the 
vast superiority of the defense over the offense, 
the ability of a comparatively small army, poorly 
supplied, if we take the German army as stand- 
ard, to defeat the efforts of an army immensely 
superior in artillery, in numbers, tactics, and 
officers. With comparative ease the French held 
the Germans at bay, nor did it seem possible to 
increase sufficiently the ratio of the offense to the 
defense to overcome the difficulty. The cam- 
paign in France was at a standstill; the crushing 
of the French army made no progress; the Rus- 
sians were advancing through Prussia and Poland 
at a rapid pace. The first great campaign had de- 
cisively failed — the crushing of France before 
Russia could be ready. There was nothing for 
it but to admit the failure, return east, and beat 
the Russians as best possible. 

Meanwhile, in the south, in the Mediterranean, 
and in the Pacific, affairs had gone badly for 
Germany. The Holy War which should rouse 
the whole of North Africa against the French 
and the British and make immensely difficult 
the prosecution of the war in Europe failed to ma- 
terialize. Not many months had elapsed before 
the entire futility of the effort was clear. A 
great campaign against the Isthmus of Suez had 
also been prospected, which should at the least 
destroy the Suez Canal, if possible take posses- 
sion of it, and thus cut communications between 
England, India, and Australia. The military 
and economic importance of success would have 

41 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

been great and the moral effect would have been 
even more striking. But it failed. 

Elaborate plans had been made for immediate 
revolts in South Africa and in India. The for- 
mer was successfully begun and then promptly 
crushed, to the immense surprise of the authori- 
ties in Berlin, by none other than the Boers them- 
selves. The revolt in India never started. The 
British Secret Service, which is almost as prompt 
as the Invisible Army, was on the trail of the at- 
tempt almost before it was begun, and prevented 
its successful launching by arresting prematurely 
all the leaders. Not only that, but the mere fact 
of the plan was successfully concealed from the 
Allied nations for many months and in its en- 
tirety has not yet been confessed. The danger 
in South Africa, at Suez, and in India was for 
some months very considerable, but it was suc- 
cessfully met. 

In the Pacific, Japan at once joined the Allies. 
Arrangements were promptly perfected between 
the Japanese and the British for naval co-opera- 
tion against German cruisers in the Pacific, and 
in all probability for the protection of India by 
the Japanese in case a great revolt should break 
out, or the Germans succeed, after a military vic- 
tory in Europe, in reaching India by the land 
route through Russia or by the Persian Gulf. 
The economic strength of Japan was added to 
that of Russia and munitions and supplies began 
at once pouring over the Trans-Siberian into the 
Russian trenches. To add insult to injury, the 
Japanese proceeded to evict the Germans from 

42 



DISAGREEABLE COMPLICATIONS 

their one possession in China, their one foothold 
in the Far East, and to do it with a speed and 
with an ease which greatly multiplied the Ger- 
man sense of loss. 

The victories of British diplomacy were sur- 
passed by their vast and unexpected success in 
the creation of the great expeditionary force for 
service in France. Mobilization proceeded with 
unsuspected speed; the troops were of admirable 
quality; their training proceeded at an unpre- 
cedented rate; the manufacture of the necessary 
equipment and munitions also made strides ut- 
terly beyond German anticipation. Some of the 
strikes which had been bought and paid for did 
materialize. Trouble in Ireland did to some ex- 
tent occur. But the elaborate interference with 
British preparations, which had been counted 
upon so definitely to assist Germany in the first 
years of the war, in case Great Britain did enter, 
failed to develop. British strength at its maxi- 
mum would soon be on the West Front and it 
became apparent that the Russians and the 
French were not to be beaten before the British 
could arrive. The Germans still clung to the hope 
that the quality of the British army would be 
scarcely equal to the complicated operations of 
trench warfare, and that in particular the training 
of the artillery could scarcely be adequate to the 
elaborate co-operation imperative between in- 
fantry and artillery in anything resembling the 
attack which had become habitual. 

But all of these expectations proved false. 
While some blundering did take place, while 

4 43 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

some considerable difficulties were experienced 
through the lack of training and the failure of 
the British troops to understand the exact co- 
operation required of them, the results as a 
whole were marvelously adequate and of ad- 
mirable quality. It was another astounding 
Allied victory, another defeat of German calcu- 
lations of the very first importance. To the 
authorities in Berlin, shock after shock came with 
a disagreeable regularity which even the great 
campaigns of Hindenburg in Poland could not 
counterbalance. Victory they knew was com- 
plex and could not be won in Poland alone. 
The whole problem, indeed, had altered. Every 
unfavorable element was to be found in its 
greatest potency, and all the favorable elements 
turned out no better than had been calculated. 
Economic problems, strategic and military prob- 
lems, appeared wherever a problem was possible. 
The whole logic of victory was altered; its 
strategy must be reconstructed. 

As the years proceeded, difficulty after diffi- 
culty accumulated. The potency of the Allied 
diplomacy had been entirely miscalculated by 
Germany, the value and significance of the in- 
vasion of Belgium, the consequences of the great 
Allied victories upon the moral issue, had been 
entirely underestimated, if not misconstrued. 
Constantly the High Command must readjust 
the strategy of victory to changing circumstances. 
In 1915 Italy entered the war and a new ex- 
tension of the line became inevitable. The ratio 
of the German army to its foes had to be revised 



DISAGREEABLE COMPLICATIONS 

and new provisions made for equipment, muni- 
tions, and food. In 1916 Rumania entered the 
war and introduced further military complica- 
tions, while in 1917 the greatest of all disasters 
occurred. The United States, the greatest 
country not already in the war, espoused the 
Allied cause firmly, seriously, and with conse- 
cration, and wa's immediately followed by a flock 
of neutral countries in South America, together 
with Arabia, Siam, and China. Allied diplomacy 
had arrayed against the Central Empires the 
entire world outside of the great iron ring drawn 
by their armies around the four belligerents and 
those neutral states completely in their power. 

While it had been undoubtedly expected 
that the strategy of victory would meet with 
difficulties originally not foreseen, and while 
a great attempt had been made in Berlin to 
estimate the difficulties at the maximum and 
the advantages at the minimum, nevertheless it 
had been scarcely contemplated that the pos- 
sible complications would be as numerous and 
the forces to be met as considerable. It can 
scarcely be doubted that if such had been 
known to be the truth, the High Command would 
not have undertaken the war at all. But the 
war had been begun and it was not now possible 
to stop it on any such considerations as these. 
Victory must be achieved in some fashion or 
a crushing defeat, with consequences literally 
incalculable to Germany and Austria, must be 
faced. It was indeed a very serious question 
whether or not victory could be predicated, 

45 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

whether or not the war must be fought with 
the expectation of losing it, and must, therefore, 
be fought so as to lose as little as possible. Cer- 
tainly the military problem was at its maximum. 
Certainly the aid which the armies might expect 
both from the navy and from the diplomats was 
at the minimum. The submarine possessed a 
potency not entirely understood,' but it was be- 
lieved to be exceedingly great. Yet upon it 
the military men were never willing to depend, 
nor could they understand the faith the naval 
authorities had in its ability to obtain a favor- 
able decision. 

The war, they saw, must be won in the field, 
but they had not expected to fight it unaided. 
Some assistance, to be sure, they had had, but 
they had never counted on the necessity of 
meeting the entire military, naval, and economic 
strength of the outside world, nor of fighting a 
war in which the ratio of strength between the 
offensive and the defensive would be so incal- 
culably great. A new strategy of victory was 
absolutely essential, one which should envisage 
defeat as well as victory, which should be suffi- 
ciently elastic to provide for constant shifts of 
operations and for some unpleasant eventuali- 
ties. 

This change in the German strategy of vic- 
tory is consequently of vast importance. The 
diplomatic and moral victory of the Allies has 
tended to conceal it. It has not been sufficiently 
admitted and emphasized by the speeches of 
Allied statesmen. Optimism undoubtedly has 

46 



DISAGREEABLE COMPLICATIONS 

its advantages, but also its dangers. While 
pessimism is at times disagreeable and for the 
moment depressing, the result upon military 
operations is invariably healthy, if the pessimism 
proceeds not from mere discouragement, but from 
a genuine analysis of the difficulties of the situa- 
tion. 

But these repeated defeats spread among the 
Germans something akin to a moral panic; 
something not far from desperation spread 
through the nation from the High Command 
down to the private soldier and the man on the 
factory bench. It was not that they gave up 
hope of victory; it was not that they did not 
feel that much could be saved even from defeat; 
but they realized from the indignation of the 
world at large and' the determination of the 
Allies that the reckoning in defeat would be ex- 
tensive, and that victory itself was more than 
ever imperative. Nothing short of it could 
render them safe from what they were pleased 
to term the vindictive hatred of their enemies. 
It is not easy otherwise to explain the acts of 
private soldiers and generals, or to understand 
some of the campaigns. Something not far from 
a livid fear spread through the German people, 
which we must not mistake for cowardice, lack 
of determination, or a willingness to accept peace 
on the Allies' terms, but which, on the contrary, 
has led them to feel that everything must be 
suffered, even death itself, rather than admit de- 
feat. They expect victory, but they have made 
elaborate preparations for defeat. In our study 

47 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

of the new German strategy of victory, we must 
never forget the essential importance of this new 
element. It is the work of men who have 
staked their all upon success, the work of those 
who cannot afford to fail. 



THE GERMAN SOLUTION OF THE DEADLOCK IN 
FRANCE 

THE strategic problem had been radically 
altered. The older strategy had predicated 
effective warfare on one front, and an ineffective 
campaign on the other. The disagreeable fact 
had to be met that effective warfare on both 
fronts, simultaneously and continuously, was to 
be expected. Moreover, it was trench warfare, 
in which the advantage lay decidedly with the 
defensive. The ratio of the contending armies 
had been entirely altered and invalidated all 
original calculations. Not only were the British 
putting an army into the field ; they were training 
an enormously greater army than had been 
thought possible and one of unexpectedly good 
quality, a fact which the lapse of time was only 
too completely to demonstrate. The neutral 
countries were aiding the Allies and were one by 
one joining in the actual prosecution of the war. 
A constant accession of economic and military 
power to the Allies was therefore to be necessarily 
provided for. The ratio of German forces to 
enemy forces was unexpectedly small and would 

49 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

unquestionably grow smaller. Bloch had been 
right: the trench warfare had destroyed the old 
strategy and the old tactics. The creation in 
France of a line of trenches stretching from the 
sea to Belfort made maneuvering of the old type 
impossible. Only direct frontal assault remained, 
and the immense advantage of the defense over 
the offense was calculated by the German Staff 
at not less than six to one and in all probability 
greater. True, they had concluded that the 
infantry could penetrate the trench line at will, 
if properly supported by accurate barrages and 
the extensive use of high-explosive shells, but 
progress was slow and costly in the extreme of 
men and munitions. 

The war could not thus be won. The new 
strategy could not be based upon the assumptions 
of the old. The element of time was not only 
important, but crucial, and might be decisive; 
the loss of numerical preponderance over Ger- 
many's actual foes in the field was becoming 
steadily a fact; the superior mobility of the 
German army had already been destroyed by the 
fixity of the trench line, while the accuracy of 
the German artillery fire gave steadily less ad- 
vantage as that of the French and of the British 
improved. Time would, therefore, slowly but 
surely destroy the ratio between the German 
forces and those of her enemies, completely 
demolish the handicap of superior mobility, 
technical skill, and more elaborate organization 
from which so much had been expected. Only 
a military decision, too, within a reasonable time 

50 



THE DEADLOCK IN FRANCE 

could defeat the economic weapons of her foes, 
by which alone, they were already exultantly de- 
claring, victory could be assured. 

The deadlock must be solved without undue 
loss of time. Germany might prolong the war 
for some years, but she could not continue it in- 
definitely; still less could she fight it by a lavish 
expenditure of material and of men. Both were 
by no means unlimited, and the manufacture of 
munitions alone would require large amounts of 
raw materials of which she possessed no indige- 
nous supplies whatever, and of which the supplies 
she had received through the neutral Scandina- 
vian countries were speedily being reduced and 
likely at any moment to be cut off altogether. 
Substitutes, to be sure, might be found, but not 
probably of such adequacy as to counterbalance 
the overwhelming superiority of her foes both in 
men and in material resources. 

Nor was it to be forgotten for a moment that 
the definite policy adopted by the British and 
French on the West Front was that of nibbling, 
of attrition, the killing of a sufficient number of 
Germans, the reducing little by little of the Ger- 
man superiority in trained men to a point where 
they would be unable longer to contest the issue. 
Certainly, the Germans must in no sense assist 
them in this work by a strategy of victory which 
would depend upon a lavish use of men and of 
material which Germany could not afford to lose. 
Such a victory would be the surest road to de- 
feat — to a defeat which could not be retrieved, 
and which would possess for Germany none of 

51 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

those compensating advantages which the Ger- 
man strategy of defeat itself proposed to achieve. 
The new plan of operations must first deal with 
this type of Allied offensive. The Staff must cal- 
culate to a nicety the strength of the army and 
prevent its wastage faster than a definite ratio, 
scientifically determined as safe, in view both of 
the defense in France and of the offensive neces- 
sarily to be prosecuted elsewhere. Each year 
for twenty years a new class of boys reaching 
military age would make available from 600,000 
to 700,000 new troops and this would be the 
absolute maximum loss in effectives, killed, in- 
curably maimed, and captured, the Germans 
could afford. 

Experience had shown that, even with a vast 
expenditure of men and of material, it was not 
possible to conduct a drive along the coast and 
turn the trench line on the Allied left, cutting off 
the British from their base of supplies. The 
great attempt at Verdun to break the trench line 
had been a horrible, bloody failure. In both 
territory had been won; yet the High Command 
knew unquestionably that both were too costly 
to continue or to repeat. Not thus could the war 
be won. 

Indeed, they became convinced that on the 
West Front nothing better than a defensive war, 
conducted at a minimum expense both of ma- 
terial and of men, could be attempted. The war 
could not be won in France, at any rate not until 
it had been won everywhere else. But the great- 
est care should be taken that it should not be 

52 



THE DEADLOCK IN FRANCE 

lost in France while it was being won elsewhere. 
Nor was this difficult. Once the decision had 
been reached that the trench line was primarily 
defensive of operations conducted for objectives 
in Poland, the Balkans, and Asia Minor, a few 
miles nearer Paris or farther away became of 
little consequence. If a retreat of a few miles 
to a new position essentially as good as the old 
would destroy the preparatory work for great 
offensives by the Allies, such tactics would con- 
stitute an admirable defensive. At such a rate 
of retreat, the defense at a minimum loss of men 
and material could be maintained longer than 
could the assault, for it could exact a cost from 
the Allies which would steadily approximate the 
maximum they could afford to pay. 

The traditions of the past, the strategic posi- 
tion of Germany, pointed to only one definite 
road to victory, only one method of breaking the 
deadlock in France and of achieving a real de- 
cision. That in itself involved a large number of 
military operations, all of which must succeed, 
none of which could fail, and which would require 
a greater strength in the army, a greater efficiency 
of the German industrial organization, a greater 
endurance in the German people than had ever 
been contemplated. For its execution time would 
be essential — a good deal of time — and it was 
necessary, therefore, to investigate most carefully 
the military dispositions essential, the economic 
defense which must be created at home to provide 
the necessary time, to say nothing of the material 
resources which would be indispensable. 

53 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

The decision could be won only by an assault 
upon the rear and flank of the great trench line 
in France, and to be effective it must come either 
through Switzerland or through Italy. It must 
be delivered in overwhelming force and with the 
greatest speed and dexterity. There must be in it 
something of the element of surprise. But once 
the German divisions burst through the line of 
the Alps and began moving with speed across 
the fair fields of France, the great trench line 
extending from Belfort to the sea must either 
be evacuated or extended. The new trench line 
could scarcely be effective if the German blow 
was sufficiently prompt and accurately timed. 
If the French chose to bend the line rather than 
to change it, a concerted assault in front, flank, 
and rear would be possible. The supreme effort 
of the war must be then made. An Allied de- 
feat would be entirely probable, if not inevitable, 
and defeat would mean annihilation, the su- 
premacy of the Central Empires in Europe. So 
the High Command seems to have reasoned. 

The true strategy of this advance through 
Switzerland upon the French flank and rear re- 
quired preparations of a military nature more 
elaborate than the High Command would have 
approved for the original campaigns of an ag- 
gressive war. The road through Switzerland 
was, unfortunately, flanked by the Italian passes, 
not merely in one, but in no less than four or 
more places. Since the Italians had entered the 
war, it was not to be assumed that in a moment of 
such extremity they would fail to cross the Alps 

54 



THE DEADLOCK IN FRANCE 

and assail the invader in places and in ways 
highly dangerous. It was easily conceivable that 
they might attempt a counter offensive of their 
own, either upon the Isonzo frontier or upon the 
Trentino, or initiate through the Inn Valley the 
old traditional attack upon Vienna which had so 
many times succeeded and which was invariably 
difficult to parry. Either maneuver would surely 
deprive the great attack upon France of its 
essential velocity and power. The passes of the 
Alps, the valley of the Po, and Switzerland itself 
must all three be in German hands before such a 
strategic move could become really feasible. 

So far as Swiss neutrality was concerned, the 
High Command concluded that it was from many 
points of view an advantage because it would 
prevent the French from taking possession of 
Switzerland in advance, of fortifying the moun- 
tain barriers which were higher on the German 
side than on the French. It would therefore 
enable the Germans to overwhelm the Swiss, 
pour through the passes into the plains of France, 
and strike the French army upon disadvantageous 
ground. No great difficulty in marching through 
Switzerland is expected. It is supposed by the 
Germans that the Swiss will be more than glad 
to aid them. If not, they will come in such 
superior numbers that resistance will be promptly 
swept aside. Besides, the Swiss army is weak in 
numbers, known to be weak in officers, and also 
entirely lacking in high-explosive artillery of the 
nature now required to stop an advancing army. 
Nor have they artillery officers and a General 

55 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

Staff adequate for such operations. Their re- 
sistance has been discounted. 

Nor yet from the Italians were difficulties 
insuperable expected. The assault upon Italy, 
which must undoubtedly be delivered, would 
certainly not be difficult and would not improb- 
ably be easy and conclusive. Did not the Aus- 
trians already possess the Trentino, the key to 
Italy? Had not historic campaigns proved the 
immense power of this offensive down the western 
bank of Lake Garda? Had not the great Na- 
poleon himself invariably permitted the Aus- 
trians to emerge from the mountains in order that 
he might meet them in the plains, instead of at- 
tempting to hold the mountains against them? 
Had not the annual maneuvers of the Italian 
army on these very fronts almost invariably re- 
sulted in the victory of the invaders? It was 
therefore to be expected that German troops, 
German officers, under the German High Com- 
mand, would execute the operation easily, 
promptly, and conclusively. 

The direction and character of the campaign 
would depend, of course, upon the position of the 
Italian army. The Central Powers must not 
only defeat the Italian army in battle, but drive 
it beyond the Po and into the Apennines, down 
beyond the possibility of defending the Italian 
passes, into a position where it would be com- 
paratively easy to hold it at bay with a minimum 
German and Austrian force. Preferably it should 
be crushed, demoralized, demolished, swept to 
one side, the whole Italian kingdom brought to an 

56 



THE DEADLOCK IN FRANCE 

end and be made subject once more to Austria. 
Should the Italians attempt to defend the Isonzo 
front, still more should they attempt an offensive 
there, it would be clear that they had delivered 
themselves into the hands of their foes, that they 
had voluntarily committed the one great sin no 
army in such a position could or should commit; 
for that the Germans would be duly and entirely 
thankful. It would be poetic justice upon the 
Italians for their treachery to the Triple Alliance. 
Yet, before any such campaign in Italy could 
oe attempted, there were other essential pre- 
liminaries to accomplish. The Serbians at Bel- 
grade controlled not only the Danube, but the 
great continental road leading down to Bulgaria 
and also the roads leading down the Morava 
Valley upon Saloniki. There was the true dan- 
ger. The Allies commanded the sea and might 
easily transport an army of stupendous size to 
Saloniki and thence attempt a drive north upon 
the weak Austrian rear. So long as Greece re- 
mained neutral and practically under German 
influence, so long as the Turks and the Bul- 
garians were loyal, there was no immediate fear. 
But there was no definitive way to check such a 
thrust except by the previous conquest and mil- 
itary occupation of Serbia itself. Incidentally, 
other objects, highly desirable from the point of 
view of the strategy of defeat presently to be 
described, would be achieved, but the campaign 
would, above all, protect the rear beyond a per- 
adventure. Hungary would then be safe, and 
the control of the Balkans assured. 

57 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

The use of these strategic positions could 
scarcely be attempted, indeed, their possession 
might even be beyond Germany's power to pro- 
cure, until the Russian army had been thoroughly 
beaten or crushed. A mere defeat would not 
suffice. The Russians possessed such immense 
reserves of men that the entire annihilation of 
the Russian army could scarcely be predicated. 
But it was desirable that the Russian corps 
of officers should be decimated; the Russian 
artillery should be captured or destroyed; that 
the war should be continued to a point beyond 
which the industrial capacity of Russia alone 
could not maintain it, and until the transporta- 
tion service had broken down and was incapable 
of bringing in from Japan or from the United 
States across the Trans-Siberian the necessary 
additional supplies. If this could be achieved, 
it might then be possible to inflict upon the Rus- 
sian army a blow which would break its organi- 
zation and destroy its defensive power for the 
duration of the war. This was the real objective. 
Conquest of territory was in comparison of 
minor import, although it might be necessary to 
overrun and hold vast areas in the endeavor to 
maneuver the Russians into an unfavorable posi- 
tion, where such a crushing blow could be dealt 
them. After all, this was the most important 
of the prerequisites of victory. Without success 
in this, nothing could be undertaken and victory 
itself would be more than difficult to assure. 

There was, of course, the possibility that 
Rumania, in her anxiety to acquire territory in 

58 



THE DEADLOCK IN FRANCE 

Hungary, would yield to the delusive promises 
of the Allies and join the Russians. In that case 
it would be necessary to postpone the great at- 
tack upon Italy and Switzerland for a year, until 
Rumania could be overrun, the Russian and 
Rumanian armies pushed back into the moun- 
tains, and the Danube cleared. Constantinople, 
Bulgaria, Serbia, the Danube, and the southern 
frontier were the danger spots from the point of 
view of victory and from the point of view of 
defense, not only because of the distance which 
the German and Austrian armies must be trans- 
ported in order to hold the southern line, not 
only because of the immensely difficult positions 
to defend, but because of the general suspicion 
of the loyalty of the people in those great dis- 
tricts and the probability that they might be 
tempted to change their allegiance under the 
pressure of a hostile army actually upon their 
soil. Time was when Bulgaria, Serbia, and Tur- 
key had been entirely riddled with British and 
Russian influence and it was by no means clear 
that the poison had been counteracted. 

The rear must be made absolutely safe; the 
rear must be made absolutely loyal; the con- 
tinuation of the Pan-Germanic Confederation 
must be assured beyond question before any at- 
tempt to deal a final blow to the French and 
British armies on the West Front. Until so 
much had been achieved, a victory in France 
would be delusive and the war itself might in- 
deed be lost while it was being won. More and 
more the High Command has gravitated to the 
5 59 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

view that victory in the west is comparatively 
valueless, because it can only assure the accept- 
ance by Great Britain and France of vital ar- 
rangements already completed in the east and 
in the Balkans. If these are already won, the 
acknowledgment of the fait accompli by the 
Allies, the Germans believe, is largely a mat- 
ter of time, even assuming an Allied victory in 
France. If these objectives have not been at- 
tained, victory in the west will be fruitless be- 
cause of itself it cannot insure the German and 
Austrian objectives in the Balkans and Asia 
Minor, since the field of war in France and Bel- 
gium is without strategic relation to either area. 

Unquestionably, for all of these complicated 
maneuvers time was essential. Time must 
elapse before the Russian army could be beaten, 
no one could tell how long. If Rumania should 
enter the war, time must elapse before she could 
be conquered. Serbia, too, would take time; 
Italy, perhaps, much time; the great campaign 
in Switzerland still more time — weeks, months, 
perhaps years for each one of these operations. 
It was undesirable and highly regrettable, but 
the German High Command could not see how 
it could be avoided. 

Herein lay the military value of the submarine 
— it could fight for time. It might hinder the 
maintenance of the Allied armies in France and 
thus decrease the pressure on the West Front 
and free Germans for service elsewhere. By the 
decrease of British shipping it might interfere 
with the transportation of the British army to 

60 



THE DEADLOCK IN FRANCE 

France and with its adequate supply of munitions 
and food. It might also check the flow of raw 
materials to Great Britain, from which her fac- 
tories must produce the necessary supplies and 
munitions for the army. It could certainly in- 
terfere with the co-operation of the United 
States and most assuredly could prevent any 
effective concentration of Allied forces at Salon- 
iki and a dangerous attack upon the Austrian 
rear. It might most probably effectively inter- 
fere with the supply of coal, of raw materials, of 
munitions, of food to Italy, a factor by no means 
to be despised when the Italian campaign began 
to be fought, and one which might be highly im- 
portant because the Italians might be forced 
to utilize their resources in advance. Less would 
therefore be on hand when the campaign began. 
It might be that the submarine could not win the 
war — the military men could scarcely believe 
that possible — but they did see that it would be 
useful in fighting for time, in reducing the forces 
which the armies would have to meet, and cer- 
tainly might place obstacles of the utmost con- 
sequence in the way of the enemy. The moral 
disapprobation of the Allied and neutral world 
was undesirable, but time must be had for many 
reasons and there must be many forces fighting 
for it. War is neither a game nor a pleasant 
sport, and the Germans long ago determined to 
discount all such objections. 



VI 

THE STKATEGY OF DEFEAT 

THE war was not a year old before it became 
clear to the Germans that the Allies were 
calculating upon a war of economic exhaustion 
which by its very length should in the end defeat 
Germany by destroying her economic power while 
it left their own unimpaired. They proposed to 
use their economic weapons to produce a definite 
decision which they were afraid the armies might 
not be able to achieve. The effectiveness of this 
type of warfare depended upon prolonging the 
war, and the Germans early saw that they did 
not in all probability have it within their power 
to regulate its length; that the Allies might and 
would prolong it in order to insure disastrous 
economic effects upon them and their allies. 
The Paris Economic Conference definitely con- 
vinced them that there was to be a war after the 
war, an economic war to the death, in which they 
and their allies would be shown no mercy. Such 
Allied strategy justified extreme measures: time 
must be made to fight not against Germany, but 
for her; the devices of the Allies must be turned 
to their own destruction. 

62 



THE STRATEGY OF DEFEAT 

If time was indispensable for the execution 
of the new strategy of victory, it was even more 
essential for the new strategy of defeat which 
the Germans promptly elaborated and which 
they determined at all costs to pursue through- 
out the war. Not later than the second summer 
was it adopted, although in all probability its 
main features had been determined upon years in 
advance. It involved necessarily an economic 
defensive for the Germans themselves, measures 
which deserve treatment in a separate chapter. 
It involved a much more important series of 
measures governing the treatment of Allied ter- 
ritory then in German hands. 

The familiar economic doctrine in regard to 
the vital elements of production was the starting- 
point of this strategy of defeat. If labor and 
capital were the essential elements of wealth 
and economic prosperity, the Allies must be 
weakened by their destruction. If the Germans 
could not well get at the capital of the Allies, 
they could reach the main element in labor, 
man power. They correctly see that the relative 
economic status of the various countries after 
the war will depend more upon the relative 
amount of labor available in each than upon 
their comparative natural resources. In no way 
could a permanent blow be dealt France and 
England more surely than by the systematic 
destruction of men in battle. The war must be 
prosecuted so as to kill steadily more and more 
Frenchmen, more and more Englishmen, always 
in greater ratio than the Germans themselves 

63 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

should lose. The whole man power of France 
was in the army and could thus be reached; 
their reckless bravery would lead them to throw 
themselves away; their determination to expel 
the Germans from French soil, to liberate Bel- 
gium, to win Alsace and Lorraine, again threw 
the advantage enormously on the side of the 
Germans, because it encouraged offensives. What 
simpler than to foster this desire for the offen- 
sive, to yield here and there minor amounts of 
territory, to encourage the belief that the German 
morale was weakened, that the German army 
was losing men, and that one more push would 
be definitive? It would be definitive, the Ger- 
mans grimly reflected, in the killing of more 
Frenchmen than France could afford to lose. 
France should be bled white. England should 
be bled as consistently as possible, although, as 
the Germans have sarcastically said, in all prob- 
ability the English would allow the French to 
do their fighting for them. 1 

The conclusive character of these losses, the 
Germans congratulated themselves, would lie 
in their permanence. The French population 
had long been at a standstill, and any loss at 
all was positive, not relative. Indeed, it would 
be relatively far greater than the positive figure. 
The yearly accession of children becoming of 
age had been for some years smaller and smaller, 
and the increments reaching manhood in the 

1 Again and again this slander crops out in America in all sorts 
of forms. The Invisible Army considers it a valuable bit of propa- 
ganda. 

64 



THE STRATEGY OF DEFEAT 

coming twenty years would be still smaller and 
could not by any conceivable human power be in- 
creased in number. For all the children were 
now alive who could possibly add to her man 
power for twenty years. If the extremities of 
the war led her to draw upon the classes of six- 
teen, seventeen, and eighteen years old, so much 
more deadly would be the effect of this campaign 
and so much more irreparable her losses. After 
the war the population would recuperate slowly 
because of the settled French habit of economy 
and the national prejudice against numerous chil- 
dren, which would be all too probably intensified 
by the war and its expenses. The habit of con- 
traception was also widespread in France, the 
morals of the nation condoned sexual irregu- 
larities of all sorts and again interfered with the 
growth of the population. The loss of man 
power was the loss of economic power; the diffi- 
culty of restoring it might well perpetuate any 
advantage which the Germans could win during 
the war. 

True, too, of the British, the more killed the 
greater would be the loss of economic power. The 
relative loss could not be as considerable because 
the population was larger than the French, was 
growing faster, and its recuperative power was 
greater. But the relative losses would still be 
to the advantage of the Central Empires. Had 
they not had the highest excess of births over 
deaths in all Europe for thirty years, and was 
not this still true? Were they not, moreover, 
willing to go to lengths in the recuperation of 

65 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

German man power which they felt sure that 
neither England nor France would be willing to 
copy? It had been the established rule at the 
outbreak of the war that every man who de- 
parted with the army should leave his wife 
pregnant. War marriages had been encouraged, 
stimulated, even commanded by the state: every 
unmarried man was to take himself a wife before 
going, and thus leave a child behind. During 
the war this same spirit has condoned adultery, 
bigamy, polygamy, and illegitimate intercourse 
of all sorts in the endeavor to multiply the 
number of children. Artificial fertilization and 
Official Pregnancy have, as some claim, been 
applied to all women still able to bear children, 
married or single. Thus would the losses be made 
good; thus would the calculations of the Allies 
for the economic destruction of Germany be 
defeated. 

The original determination to fight the war in 
enemy territory had been completely successful 
and the war was being waged far within French 
boundaries, far within the Russian frontiers. 
This made possible a destruction of the maximum 
of enemy capital during the war under the guise 
of military measures, made it possible to fight 
the war in a manner as costly as possible to the 
enemy, to adopt the only method by which their 
economic defensive might be defeated. Sys- 
tematic destruction should be organized by the 
army of all permanent improvements in enemy 
territory not immediately useful to the Germans 
themselves during the conduct of the war. The 

60 



THE STRATEGY OF DEFEAT 

land shuld be laid waste, trees cut down, towns 
destroyed, bridges blown up — indeed, every work 
of man, however slight its value. Mines and 
factories within the German lines should be 
worked to their utmost without any attempt 
to preserve the plant itself. Where the plant 
could be transported to Germany, it would be a 
permanent loss to the enemy and the transfer 
should be made. 

Wherever, therefore, Germans have been com- 
pelled to abandon stretches of territory to the 
French, they have laid it waste with a systematic 
destruction whose motive has often puzzled the 
Allies. This is it: that the period of recovery 
for France may be long, progress slow, and the 
cost excessive. It will force the French to un- 
dertake an elaborate work of economic recon- 
struction in northern France which will undoubt- 
edly hamper their effective economic competition 
with Germany for a number of years proportion- 
ate with the area and completeness of the 
destruction. 

The probability or possibility of defeat made 
imperative the preservation of the German 
merchant marine at all costs, that the navy should 
not be risked in battle under any circumstances. 
What could be worse than to win the war in the 
field and still be unable to contest the control of 
the seas? The loss of the war in the field coupled 
to the loss of the navy would make defeat fatal 
indeed. Measures to save the marine had been 
undertaken promptly at the outbreak of the 
war. An astonishing number of German ships 

67 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

were, therefore, in their home harbors; a very- 
large number were in neutral ports; and the ut- 
most efforts were to be made during the war to 
conciliate the neutrals and thus save the interned 
ships. Of course, the British would not sit 
quietly and allow this sort of diplomacy to suc- 
ceed. The utmost pressure would no doubt be 
put by the sea power upon all those neutrals, in 
whose harbors German ships were to be found, 
to force them to declare war and confiscate the 
ships. 

The probability that the German fleet interned 
in neutral waters could not be saved made more 
and more necessary the essential work of the sub- 
marine, for the submarine warfare, in particular 
the unrestricted warfare, seems not to have been 
intended primarily to starve England. It was 
thought, indeed, that England might be made to 
suffer considerable privation, that difficulties 
might well be put in the way of communication 
with the British army in France, of supplying coal 
and munitions to Italy, the preservation of con- 
nections with America and the self-governing 
colonies. But that the destruction could proceed 
to such a point that England would be literally 
starved was hardly expected by the High Com- 
mand, although the naval authorities held out 
hope. Unquestionably, the destruction of Allied 
merchant-ships during the war could reduce the 
odds which would needs be met after the war by 
a Germany which had lost as an act of war a 
considerable section of her own merchant fleet. 
The submarine should restore the ratio between 

68 



THE STRATEGY OF DEFEAT 

German shipping and that owned by the rest of 
the world. This was its true work. If the ratio 
could be made more favorable to Germany, the 
submarine would then have accomplished almost, 
if not all, that could reasonably and rationally be 
expected of it. Of course, to use the submarine 
for such a purpose as this at the cost of the ships 
actually interned in neutral harbors would be 
silly in the extreme. It should not be thus 
utilized until the Germans had become morally 
certain that the preservation of those ships was 
impossible. Thus would a permanent loss of 
capital in all enemy countries result which could 
be replaced only with great difficulty and in time. 
Might not this work of the submarine also have 
military results of importance? It would cer- 
tainly force England to devote material and labor 
to the building of ships which might otherwise 
have been devoted to the maintenance of the 
army. It might even be possible to sink enough 
ships to make just that difference between the 
tonnage required to maintain the army at full 
efficiency and that which would just fall short 
of it. So much might be confidently expected; 
so much, indeed, the Germans have very nearly 
attained. The submarine would prevent the 
building of additional warships of large size dur- 
ing the war and would thus probably leave the 
relative strength of the German and British 
navies in capital ships the same. This was most 
desirable, for if the Germans should win, as they 
expected to upon the land, it would then be 
necessary to carry the war upon the sea, and, if 

69 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

they had lost in the meantime the capital ships 
of the German fleet, it would be difficult to 
predicate the time when that war might be be- 
gun. To win on land at vast expense of life and 
treasure, only to find Great Britain more securely 
intrenched than ever upon the sea, would be 
serious; but to lose on land, and find the enemy 
still stronger at sea than before would be in- 
tolerable. 

The strategy of defeat must above all insure 
Germany against loss of the economic control of 
strategic areas, Belgium, Serbia, Poland, Ru- 
mania, which, after a defeat in the field, she would 
most certainly be required to relinquish and 
which perhaps nothing less than a truly astound- 
ing victory would enable her to retain. Nor was 
it perhaps desirable to retain them as they had 
been before the war. Certainly the most im- 
portant — Belgium and Serbia — had been popu- 
lated by too vindictive and energetic a people 
ever to co-operate profitably with the Fatherland. 
The first year of the war proved that the Belgians 
would not easily be converted. If they could 
not be used, they must then be systematically 
destroyed. What was handed back to the Allies 
should be nothing better than the shell of Bel- 
gium, of Serbia, of Poland, and of Rumania, 
negligible in man power and incapable of resist- 
ing further German economic penetration. 

"If we do not get Belgium into our sphere of 
power," wrote the governor of Belgium, Von 
Bissing, to Doctor Streseman in January, 1917, 
"and if we do not govern it in German fashion 

70 



THE STRATEGY OF DEFEAT 

(and use it in German fashion), the war is lost. 
For more than two years past my policy has 
been guided by such consideration of what may 
happen in the future." "Our only weapon is the 
policy of power," he wrote in his political testa- 
ment; "this policy must see to it that the 
Belgian population, now still hostile to us, shall 
adapt itself and subordinate itself, if only 
gradually, to the German domination." "We 
shall never again have recourse to the vacillating 
policy of conciliation which was so disadvan- 
tageous not only in Alsace-Lorraine, but also in 
Poland." "He who remains in the country must 
declare his allegiance to Germany and after a 
certain time must declare his allegiance to Ger- 
manism. Expropriation is absolutely necessary 
in order to prevent such a state of things as exists 
in Alsace-Lorraine to the present day. Half- 
measures and a middle course must be con- 
demned most of all." l 

Such a policy could be carried out only through 
ruthless power and by unfaltering "German 
methods." The Belgian and Polish population 
must be decimated by physical suffering; too 
little food or unfit food only should be supplied 
them; coal, wood, clothing, should all be insuf- 
ficiently provided; executions on the slightest 
excuse should take place. Whole villages could 
be expatriated on the slightest clash between 
them and the officials. Many might be worked 



1 General Von Bissing's Testament, A Study in German Ideals, 
London, 1917. Pp. 19, 25, 28, 31, 32. 

71 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

to death by forced labor in Belgium itself, in 
Poland, and particularly in Germany. The 
deportation of people from Belgium and Poland 
to Germany by the thousand could be carried out 
and would be undoubtedly effective. If they 
survived, they would certainly be too few in num- 
ber to be dangerous and would in time amal- 
gamate with the German population. If they 
died, the end was even more securely attained. 
As for Serbia and Rumania, the general exter- 
mination of the population could take place as 
an act of war. With those people there was no 
need to bother; they were worthless and had 
better be slain. If too great difficulty was ex- 
perienced, epidemics might be set free among 
the population and among the cattle. In all 
probability this was done in Serbia and in 
Rumania, where the typhus carried off most of 
the population. 

Then, too, in these strategic areas there should 
take place that same thorough, systematic de- 
struction of all permanent improvements not 
useful to the Germans themselves during the 
war, the removal of everything movable of the 
slightest value. If Germany should be defeated 
or be compelled at the close of the war to hand 
them back to France, Great Britain, and Russia, 
it would then be possible for them to say liter- 
ally to their enemies, "Thy house is returned 
unto thee desolate." 

The moral justification for this treatment cer- 
tainly gave the Germans very little trouble. 
If the war itself was justifiable, if German pos- 

72 



THE STRATEGY OF DEFEAT 

session of these areas was in any sense necessary, 
these measures were legitimately forced upon 
them as a defense against defeat and the vin- 
dictive destruction of Germany by her enemies. 
If anything done since the first invasion of Bel- 
gium was justifiable, certainly this was; if what 
had hitherto been done was unjustifiable, the 
addition to the reckoning of this amount would 
scarcely increase it. Could it not in any case 
be plausibly declared that all this destruction 
was the result of the war, of the refusal of the 
population to co-operate peaceably with the 
Germans, whom strategic necessity brought into 
their land? There was a very real need for labor 
in Germany and a very real scarcity of food. 
Was it to be supposed that these aliens should 
be allowed to sit and eat the bread of idleness 
while the Germans worked? None who refused 
to work should eat; indeed, it might almost be- 
come a necessary principle that none disloyal 
should be allowed to eat. 

In all this the Germans deny the slightest 
trace of brutality. That it involves pain, star- 
vation, exhaustion, death, they readily admit. 
But they distinguish sharply between brutality 
and ruthlessness. Brutality is cruelty for its 
own sake, the needless infliction of suffering, 
the gratification of the lusts and hatreds of 
the individual. It is never purposeful, imper- 
sonal, calculated, objective. It is to be as severely 
reprobated as Schrecklichkeit is to be defended, 
which should not be rendered in English, "fright- 
fulness," because that translation suggests a 

73 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

condemnation of this practice by the Germans 
themselves which they are far from possessing. 
Schrecklichkeit is ruthlessness — the purposeful, 
impersonal, objective performance by the loyal 
sons of the Fatherland of acts which would be 
lustful, cruel, bloody, abominable if committed 
for their own gratification, but which become 
praiseworthy and commendable in the highest 
degree when performed in compliance with the 
needs of the state. Such is the "German fash- 
ion" to which Von Bissing referred; such the 
policy he initiated. Its results are assured; its 
expediency undoubted; its justifiability un- 
questioned. And therefore, exclaimed the Kaiser 
to the Emperor Charles, "Forward with God!" 



VII 

THE ECONOMIC DEFENSIVE 

WE shall patently deceive ourselves if we 
suppose that the German expectation of 
a surprise campaign against France and Russia, 
which would bring the war to a prompt and 
glorious conclusion, closed the eyes of the High 
Command to the possibility of unexpected re- 
sistance and a long war. Thirty years of cal- 
culations and preparations would have been more 
than wasted if the economics of a long war, in 
which the participation of the sea power would 
throw Germany on its own resources, had not 
received elaborate consideration and produced 
results which were deemed conclusive. If Ger- 
many could be starved out by a few months' 
blockade, no war was feasible. The economic 
and financial preparations were, if anything, 
more elaborate than the military, both from the 
point of view of production and from that of 
subsistence. The High Command could not pro- 
ceed upon guesswork, and the continuance of 
the war has demonstrated the essential accuracy 
of their economic calculations and the adequacy 
of their dispositions. 

6 75 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

That they could be literally starved out they 
could not believe. Nor did they feel that there 
was real danger that the economic deficiencies 
might reach a point which would affect the 
strength and morale of the army or produce a 
revolution among the civilian population. The 
blockade itself would not be, could not be, 
tight. Holland, Denmark, and the Scandinavian 
countries would send in enormous supplies of 
metals, cotton, fats, grain, rubber, medicines, 
which they themselves would procure from the 
outside world. No regulation or supervision 
could entirely stop such a traffic. Only the pro- 
hibition of all importation into neutral states 
would be effective, and it was felt that the sea 
power would be unwilling to throw the neutral 
states on the German side by an interference 
with their trade. It would, furthermore, be a 
violation of the very laws regarding neutrals 
which the sea power itself had pleaded in the 
case of Belgium, and would impose suffering 
upon them which the Allies had bound them- 
selves to forego. 

This the Germans saw was to their own ad- 
vantage, and for it they were duly thankful. 
It proved to them the correctness of their own 
logic, that morality could only interfere with 
the efficiency of the prosecution of wars. Not 
until the fourth year of the struggle did the 
Allies totally stop leakage to Germany through 
Scandinavia and Holland by forbidding im- 
portation to the neutral countries themselves. 
While these leaks perhaps did not reach the 

76 



THE ECONOMIC DEFENSIVE 

proportion believed probable by the German 
High Command, they were nevertheless suffi- 
ciently considerable to assist Germany and to 
prolong the war. Substitutes for the necessary 
raw materials not produced or procurable in 
Germany were found. Medicines and hospital 
supplies presented greater difficulties, but in one 
way or another they have been surmounted. 

The economic defensive for the war, the Ger- 
mans concluded at the outbreak, was good, and, 
as the war has continued, they have more and 
more manifested their satisfaction in the cor- 
rectness of their original calculations. The 
economic defensive now needed was the defense 
against defeat. The strategy of defeat would 
reduce the odds against the Germans at the 
end of the war, might indeed make the solution 
of the economic problem after the war easier, 
but it could scarcely solve it. Somehow or 
other Germany must so fight the war as not to 
emerge from it exhausted economically and thus 
lose its fruits by reason of a comparatively 
greater economic exhaustion than in the Allied 
countries. Such was the loudly trumpeted ex- 
pectation in Paris and London. At all costs 
it must be foiled. In the eventual victory the 
economic defensive would be not less important 
than the military campaigns. Indeed, if an ade- 
quate economic defensive could not be devised, 
it would not be expedient to continue the war. 

The economic defensive was necessarily con- 
ditioned upon an ability to continue the war 
indefinitely without wastage. Germany must 

77 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

emerge from it with strength at least propor- 
tionately as great as her relative strength to that 
of the other powers before the war. Her central 
position, with a limited area, with a population 
growing by leaps and bounds, made the vital 
issue that of relative and comparative, not of 
positive, strength. This ratio could be main- 
tained only if she could both prosecute and win 
the war at a cost positively and relatively far 
less than that which her adversaries must pay. 
It had been possible to devise a strategy of 
defeat which might cause her enemies to pay 
heavily for their victory; it remained to invent 
an economic defensive which should reduce the 
inevitable cost of prosecuting the war. 

The High Command felt certain that this 
could be done. The war would cost Germany 
a minimum of material and effort. In the first 
place, she was already prepared; there would 
be no waste in experimentation, in the extem- 
porization of an army; no costly errors and mis- 
takes to be recorded; no costs due to delays. 
The industrial fabric to support the war had 
already been built, and indeed had already been 
paid for, in characteristic German fashion, with 
other people's capital. To prosecute the war at 
a minimum cost, they had merely to maintain 
and utilize what already existed. 

Again, the perfection of German business 
organization could reduce every cost in produc- 
tion and distribution to a minimum. The bank- 
ing system had long ago been centralized and 
was completely in the control of the government. 

78 



THE ECONOMIC DEFENSIVE 

Industries had already been tabulated in their 
relation to the war; exactly which were to be 
transformed and which continued was already 
ascertained. New bureaus of priority and of 
employment could easily and quickly with a 
minimum effort, minimum friction, minimum 
cost deal with the great transformation of in- 
dustrial Germany from a peace to a war basis. 
Transportation would again be simple and the 
cost at a minimum. Most of the railroads were 
owned by the states themselves, the strategic 
railroads in Alsace by the Empire. It made little 
difference whether one calculated that the rail- 
roads were conducted by the states during the 
war at a profit or that the states received trans- 
portation during the war at cost. In any case, 
the true fact was that transportation was pro- 
vided, as well as most manufactures, by the 
state itself from its own resources, under the 
most scientific management imaginable, in which 
the principle of the cost itself had received defin- 
itive treatment. If the Germans did not win, 
if the economic defensive was not conclusive, 
it would be because science, forethought, or- 
ganization, calculation, were more incompetent 
than muddling through. The whole history of 
civilization seemed to prove to the Germans the 
contrary. 

The decision of the military authorities to fight 
the war on enemy soil, expedient for strategic 
reasons, provided also economic aid of the very 
first importance. The French iron and coal 
mines were rich and easily mined; their proxim- 

79 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

ity, moreover, to the battle line was of the first 
consequence. The deprivation of the French of 
these resources was not to be forgotten in its 
significance. Belgian factories and foundries 
were numerous and adequate in equipment, and 
the saving to the German fabric by their opera- 
tion in Belgium or their transportation to Ger- 
many and operation there would be immense. 
All would become the property of the state; 
all could be operated either by prisoners or by 
soldiers at a literal minimum cost or at the price 
of the sustenance of the people employed. Nor 
was it to be forgotten that the German army 
would as a matter of course take some hundreds 
of thousands of prisoners; that there would be 
within the German lines some millions of French 
and Belgian laborers, who could be utilized in the 
fields, mines, factories, or any place where skill 
was not indispensable nor secrecy imperative. 
Forced labor, the Germans realized, could rarely 
be applied to skilled tasks, but certainly there 
would be an enormous aggregate of rough labor 
of the coarsest kind which could in this way be 
secured at a price literally below cost. Thus 
also could the great strategy of defeat be best 
executed. 

The war itself could be prosecuted with ab- 
solutely no depletion of the permanent plant it- 
self other than wear and tear of its use and the 
loss of the ships interned in neutral countries. 
For such systematic destruction as they them- 
selves would visit upon France, Poland, and 
Serbia would be impossible within Germany, 

80 



THE ECONOMIC DEFENSIVE 

even under defeat, for they could scarcely con- 
ceive of the literal invasion of German territory. 
No Allied soldier should set his foot on German 
soil, and, at the end of the war, if their measure 
was defeat, they would find themselves with 
their permanent plant unimpaired. They would 
thus begin the period after the war with no work 
of reconstruction to do, with an administrative, 
executive, industrial machinery tried and experi- 
enced in the art of co-operation, in the art of pro- 
ducing the maximum effect at the minimum cost 
of labor and of material. Such an organization 
could scarcely fail to be of the utmost value 
in the period following the war. That organiza- 
tion itself must work effectively for Germany to 
defeat such extraordinary economic measures as 
its enemies might undertake. Through it prices 
and interest rates might be controlled through- 
out the war and kept practically at the old level. 
Thus the total figure of the cost would be nomi- 
nally reduced; the great evil wo aid be avoided of 
a change during the war of the level of prices, 
with the consequent unfavorable effect upon the 
incomes of those living upon permanent invest- 
ments. There should be no financial jugglery 
during the war, no profiteering, no stock-jobbing, 
no huge fortunes created out of the conflict. 

So far as possible private industry should be 
fostered and its normal profits preserved; the 
civilian population be kept busy and happy; an 
abundance of manufactured material made to 
loose upon the world at the close of the war, with 
which the necessary raw materials to begin the 

81 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

new economic war for trade might be bought. 
A commission of experts was appointed to plan 
measures by which German trade in its full vol- 
ume, if possible in increased volume, might be 
resumed after the war, and to meet such meas- 
ures as the British and the French might in the 
mean time have initiated to prevent German 
competition from becoming effective. To this 
commission would be delegated at the close of 
the war that same type of dictatorial power 
which the war commissions had had during the 
great conflict itself. When the war was over it 
would, as a matter of fact, if it ended in a Ger- 
man defeat, have just begun, but the machinery 
to prosecute it would be ready and waiting. 

Such an economic defensive would insure Ger- 
many's ability to extend the necessary aid to 
Austria-Hungary and to their allies, Bulgaria and 
Turkey. So long as the war should last she 
must manufacture for them and utilize somehow 
all their products in return. This would be, 
however, an operation of the utmost simplicity, 
its complete success assured in advance. They 
produced what she must have and could not 
create in sufficient quantities for herself. She 
could supply and must somehow sell, if her 
civilian population was not to suffer seriously 
during the war, exactly what they must have 
and could not otherwise obtain. The economic 
structures of the members of the Pan-Germanic 
Confederation were fortunately complementary. 
The war should impress that mutuality of eco- 
nomic interest upon the whole population from 

82 



THE ECONOMIC DEFENSIVE 

Berlin to Bagdad and from the North Sea to the 
Adriatic. 

If the blockade was from many points of view 
a disadvantage, it was, in view of the solidarity 
of Mittel-Europa after the war, a positive bless- 
ing. Carefully, methodically, scientifically, the 
economic development of the whole vast area 
could be nurtured and forced ahead at a pace 
and by methods otherwise impossible. A literal 
maximum of co-operation, of mutual aid, and of 
profit could be insured and made permanent. 
Whatever economic rivalry, duplication, and 
weakness there had been could be accurately and 
permanently obviated. Not otherwise could the 
economic problem of the war be solved. Most 
fortunately, these imperative needs of the war 
itself, the very dictatorial authority they allowed 
the state to assume, the exertion which the popu- 
lation could be persuaded to make imder the 
stimulus of the blockade and the fear of defeat, 
would go far to solve the difficult economic and 
administrative problems of Central Europe, ad- 
vance its development relative to its enemies, 
and insure precisely that economic structure and 
industrial co-operation imperative during the 
war after the war. The fighting of the war 
could be made to solve the problems of the future, 
even those of defeat. 

For the Germans hold that national and inter- 
national status depends in fact upon economic 
strength and not upon military victories nor upon 
territorial dispositions won by them. If one 
country is relatively stronger than another in 

83 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

number of men, in industrial development, in the 
spirit of co-operation, no military victories can 
change that fact, if fact it be. Predominance in 
Europe means to the Germans no mere political 
or diplomatic prestige, but a literal superiority of 
economic development of which they are con- 
vinced armies, navies, treaties, congresses, are 
merely the counterfeit presentments. If they 
can insure effective economic co-operation 
throughout Central Europe during the war when 
they are undisturbed, can make continued co- 
operation mutually profitable to Bulgarians, 
Magyars, Slavs, and Turks, as well as to Ger- 
mans and Austrians, can convince those numer- 
ous peoples of the reality of that profit and the 
assurance of its permanence by the mere con- 
tinuity of co-operation, they have created a de- 
fensive which will be unassailable. No military 
defeat can touch it, for its basis is not military. 
No changes in strategic dispositions can render 
it vulnerable, because it is not located in any one 
spot. No dissolution of existing political and ad- 
ministrative agencies can prevent its continua- 
tion so long as the people believe it profitable 
and desirable to continue. For all of their blind 
confidence in force, they see that there are eco- 
nomic manifestations which force may extend and 
intensify, but which it cannot assist, once they 
come into existence, and which it is powerless to 
destroy. The reality of the new Pan-German 
Confederation must lie in the consensus of popu- 
lar opinion in its favor, not in armies or factories. 
The war could more definitely establish it, the 

84 



THE ECONOMIC DEFENSIVE 

Germans saw with unconcealed satisfaction, than 
two generations of peace. 

The war would in the mean time have cost 
Great Britain, France, and the United States, to 
say nothing of Russia, the very maximum. Al- 
though their resources were greater than those 
of Germany, the cost itself would be greater. 
They must extemporize a war organization, pass 
through a long period of experimentation, 
through the inevitable costly failures. The gen- 
eral habit of business in those countries would 
compel the conduct of the war by private enter- 
prise at a profit rather than by the government 
at cost. Upon such an extemporized organiza- 
tion the drain of the war itself would be greater; 
the wasted effort, the loss of time, would more 
than equalize the economic equation in favor of 
Germany. Like the military defensive, the eco- 
nomic defensive would rest upon the excellence of 
German organization, upon its admirable ma- 
chinery, upon effective co-operation, upon the 
definite foresight with which their resources were 
actually utilized. Even defeat would thus find 
Germany proportionately stronger than before, 
even if actually weaker. Nor was more essential. 

Nor could it fail; the lesson of history was 
clear. To be sure, the only analogous situation 
was not entirely recent, but the Germans do not 
believe that conditions have changed radically 
in the last century. France, during the Revolu- 
tionary and Napoleonic eras, fought a war for 
twenty-five years against every country in Eu- 
rope by turns, and finally with the entire world. 

85 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

She emerged from it beaten, after having experi- 
enced colossal disasters, an unprecedented strain 
upon her man power and upon her economic 
fabric. Her armies were broken and disorgan- 
ized; she was despised and hated by the whole 
world; the allied armies were actually in Paris 
and there was nowhere in France any sentiment 
for resistance. The great leader and the majority 
of his subordinates were proscribed and about to 
depart into exile. Her enemies believed her 
crushed beyond any ability to recover within a 
generation, thought her man power destroyed, 
her economic fabric weakened, and they pos- 
sessed an entire willingness to destroy her political 
independence and her international position. 

Yet Talleyrand correctly saw France relatively 
stronger than other nations. Though her efforts 
had been greater, her suffering from the war 
had been less, primarily because of the careful 
administrative and industrial reorganization of 
the country by Napoleon. He had known how 
to utilize such strength as she possessed. He 
had known, moreover, how to conserve it; how 
to bring her through the war without exhausting 
her; and he had proved for all time that so 
long a war might be fought against great odds 
without destroying the country fighting it. 
Probably no fact in history has more appealed 
to the German leaders than this, nor have they 
more confidence in any of the assumptions on 
which their great campaigns are based than upon 
this. The Revolution, in fact, had given free 
play to the economic strength of France at a 

86 



THE ECONOMIC DEFENSIVE 

time when the full economic power of other 
nations was still fettered by feudalism and by 
tradition. Napoleon had known how to utilize 
this new strength, hud carefully arranged that 
the war should be fought on foreign soil, that 
the true damage should be done there, that the 
true economic reconstruction should be thrust 
upon other nations, Indeed, the plight of Prus- 
sia, of Belgium, of Italy, was far more desperate 
in 1814 than that of France, and the subsequent 
history of the nations indubitably proved that 
France recovered far more rapidly from the war 
than any country in Europe save England. 
And all this tremendous result had been achieved 
with fewer resources, with fewer men, without 
foresight, with much inexcusable waste and 
bungling during the early years of the Revolu- 
tionary period, and with an economic fabric far 
less capable and carefully adjusted to the needs 
of the situation than the German administrative, 
military, and economic fabrics certainly were. 
What had been done before during a war with 
inferior resources and amid great economic diffi- 
culties, at a time when economic administration 
was not fairly understood, could certainly be 
done at the end of the twentieth century by 
forethought and scientific management by the 
ablest and strongest country in Europe. 

The French defense had been absolutely con- 
clusive. Talleyrand had merely to point at 
Vienna to her truly undiminished resources, to 
her yet unexploited man power, to convince 
the allies that their original scheme of imposing 

87 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

terms of peace upon France highly unfavorable 
to her international position and even to her 
political independence must be abandoned. A 
settlement hostile to France could not be made 
because she had devised a satisfactory economic 
defense. Had not the same thing proved true 
after the war of 1870? Had not France then been 
beaten and crushed beyond precedent? Had 
not her army been disorganized and vanquished, 
her capital captured, and such terms of peace 
dictated to a humiliated nation as one Euro- 
pean country had rarely exacted from anoth- 
er? And yet France had recovered from the 
war far quicker than had Germany. Indeed, 
in the subsequent ten years the economic progress 
of France was such as to cause Bismarck to feel 
that the war had been almost a failure. He had 
meant it to cripple France for a generation, and 
the industrial organization of the Second Em- 
pire had thoroughly retrieved Napoleon Ill's 
military and political blunders. Once more 
France was saved in the face of military defeat. 
Once more the victory of a foreign army had 
proved futile to achieve its real result. The 
more fools they if the Germans should not learn 
from history the lesson of their own past, should 
not conduct this war in a way certain to win it, 
even although it were lost. 



VIII 

UTILIZING THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 

SHOULD the strategy of defeat and the 
economic defensive both fail, there would 
still remain the Russian Revolution. The Ger- 
mans have long been familiar with the fact that 
the greatest undeveloped economic area in the 
world lay at their very door, its strategic ap- 
proaches in their control- — Russia. Long ago 
they saw that its economic structure was essen- 
tially complementary to their own and that the 
economic benefits of close co-operation would be 
entirely mutual. While we shall scarcely believe 
that the outbreak of the Russian Revolution was 
unexpected in Berlin, its character and the ex- 
tent of its success were probably unhoped for. 
Its importance for victory was already great; 
its significance in defeat might be unparalleled. 
It might even turn defeat into victory. 

Germany has been and expects to be an indus- 
trial nation on a large scale, a country importing, 
not exporting, labor, anxious, for political rea- 
sons, to retain the population at home by the 
development of intensive industry and by the 
reduction of the amount of extensive labor em- 

89 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

ployed within its bounds. This involves the 
progressive decline of agriculture in comparison 
with the growth of population, the progressive 
dependence of Germany upon imports of food 
and of raw material. Here is the true secret of 
Pan-Germanism. How can the population be 
retained at home and yet continue to grow at the 
rate of the past generation? How can the ratio 
of military and industrial strength of Germany 
to other nations be maintained permanently, how- 
ever great the growth of other nations may be? 
They see only one solution — a market for manu- 
factured goods in which she may buy at favorable 
rates the food and raw materials she needs. Both 
the market for the goods which she expects to sell 
and for the goods she must buy must be capable 
of expansion; for the production of food and the 
manufacture of goods must keep pace with the 
growth of Germany herself. Both must, there- 
fore, be capable of unlimited expansion. This is 
the true object of the war. This lost, the war 
would be lost, even if won; this won, the war 
would have been won, even though lost. 

Russia is and long will be a country vast in 
area, condemned to extensive agriculture by the 
ignorance of its peasant population and the char- 
acter of its soil. It is even a country in which 
the colonization of unoccupied land is still pro- 
gressing, of a type which ceased in Europe during 
the early Middle Ages and which even in Amer- 
ica is now a thing of the past. As yet its industry 
is rudimentary; for its own needs Russia pro- 
duces and for generations can produce no ade- 

90 



UTILIZING THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 

quate supply. Economic competition with Ger- 
many, therefore, in manufactured goods is im- 
possible for many decades to come. Hence Rus- 
sia needs manufactured goods and requires a 
market for the food, oil, and metals which she 
can export in great quantities. Some of it has 
been already sold to the Germans, but the true 
markets have been found in England, France, 
and Italy, and involved a long, expensive trans- 
port, both for exports and for imports. The 
mutual economic advantage to Germany and 
Russia of an exchange of products is striking. 
Each is able to supply precisely what the other 
needs, each is able to supply it in adequate 
measure. Even if shut off completely from the 
rest of the world, neither would suffer seriously, 
for their economic structures are complementary. 
This fact is not in dispute and never has been. 
Still less is it new to the statesmen of both 
countries. 

The difficulties in the way of the development 
of this intercourse have been political and inter- 
national, not economic. Russia is so placed in 
the world as to require access to the ocean high- 
ways through the Baltic and the Black Sea. 
She is worse off than Germany. Not only are 
England and the Channel in her way, but Den- 
mark, the German fleet, and the Baltic Sea itself, 
on the one hand; Constantinople, Malta, and 
Gibraltar, on the other; while her northern har- 
bors are frozen for nearly six months in the 
year. Such obstacles in the way of Russian ac- 
cess to the world's trade have brought Russia to 

7 91 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

terms with the sea power, for she has been in 
Britain's hands for any access at all to the out- 
side world. Naturally, too, the sea power has 
drawn to herself the great bulk of Russian trade. 

This same necessity for access to the outside 
world has made Russia the natural foe of Ger- 
many and Austria and of their hoped-for eco- 
nomic and political expansion. If they should 
succeed in strengthening their present position 
in Europe by a more extensive control of the 
Balkans and of Constantinople, they would 
place themselves permanently across Russia's 
path and be dangerous in proportion as that 
permanence was assured. All of this has been 
thoroughly realized by the dynasty and by the 
great majority of intelligent Russians. The 
foreign policy of Russia since 1892 has been 
definitely anti-German and has become more 
so with each succeeding decade. The czars 
concluded that her destiny lay in Europe, and 
not in Asia. More and more were they deter- 
mined to solve adequately the problem of western 
Russia and to sacrifice imperialistic ambitions 
in India and Manchuria. 

But so long as the dynasty cherished such a 
foreign policy, based upon such views of Russia's 
position in the world, it was impossible for Ger- 
many to permit an exchange of trade beyond a 
very moderate point, or to countenance the crea- 
tion in Russia of an industrial structure of real 
force. Still less must Germany depend on the 
Russian market for the solution of her future 
needs; she could not thus afford to nourish the 

92 



UTILIZING THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 

adversary, increase her wealth, solve his eco- 
nomic problem, put behind unlimited man power 
a strong economic fabric, built by German capi- 
tal and skill and capable of maintaining an 
army of unlimited size in the field. Such a 
policy would solve the economic problem in 
Germany at the expense of her political, mili- 
tary, and international position. Did not her 
safety rest upon the ratio between the armed 
forces of France and of Russia to those of Ger- 
many? If she should thus increase by economic 
development the potentialities of the Russian 
army, would she not destroy the possibilities 
of maintaining that ratio in the future? It 
could not be thought of for an instant. Russia 
must remain undeveloped. In the continued 
weakness of its economic fabric would alone he 
the true safety of Germany. The solution of 
the German economic problem must be sought 
elsewhere. It must result in political as well as 
economic benefit and prove to be not only self- 
supporting, but self-defensive. 

The object, therefore, of the great Pan- 
Germanic scheme for a confederation which 
should stretch from the North Sea to the Persian 
Gulf was to solve the German economic prob- 
lem without at the same time making more com- 
plex its international and military difficulties. 
Undeveloped territory must be found, unde- 
veloped territory not accessible to sea power, or 
at the least not directly within the sea power's 
control. In Hungary, in the Balkans, in Turkey, 
in Mesopotamia lay great undeveloped trade 

93 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

areas capable of almost unlimited expansion. 
True, they were less adequate as markets than 
Russia and their future development was less 
assured, because the population had still to be 
educated in the arts of production and in the 
economic wants which would create the nec- 
essary markets for German manufactured goods. 
Mesopotamia, indeed, was almost unpopulated 
and in some respects nothing more than a desert. 
The development of these areas, moreover, 
meant a long railroad haul through districts 
none too friendly to Germany and susceptible 
to attack by the sea power. The Bagdad Rail- 
road was vulnerable — a fact never to be forgot- 
ten — and could be effectively protected only by 
a dominant Germany in Europe, already in con- 
trol of the military situation and, so far as pos- 
sible, of the economic. Against a victorious 
sea power no defense of this situation by a de- 
feated Germany was possible. The Pan-Ger- 
manic solution of Germany's needs, in fact, 
depended upon victory. Defeat would effec- 
tively destroy its adequacy ; the loss of Con- 
stantinople and of Trieste would be fatal; the 
loss of the German merchant marine and fleet 
would be even more deadly. Never again would 
it be possible to build a fleet by surprise and so 
change the ratio of strength between the British 
and German fleets as to put the former into real 
danger of defeat should it accept battle. This 
has always been the greatest weapon of the so- 
called Peace Party in Germany. The Pan- 
Germanic solution was infallible in case of vic- 

94 



UTILIZING THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 

tory, but what should be done in case of defeat? 
Where was the possible provision for the strategic 
retirement which every good general must pro- 
vide? 

And now has come the reply — the Russian 
Revolution. There is to be in the future a Rus- 
sia intent on the solving of Russian problems 
and willing to free itself from the diplomatic 
policies of the old dynasty, ready to renounce its 
schemes of aggression and of imperialism, to re- 
nounce the control of the Black Sea and of the 
Baltic, to renounce conquests in Manchuria in 
favor of a definitive solution of economic prob- 
lems in European Russia. No longer should the 
Russian army be the controlling element in the 
industrial problem, and Russia's foreign position 
the controlling fact in domestic policies. All of 
the contending parties in present Russia are 
anxious to try socialistic and anarchistic experi- 
ments, to abolish to a greater or less degree 
private property, to interfere with the hitherto 
established methods of production in industry, to 
institute a government so loose as to approximate 
in modern thinking no government at all. They 
are for the most part theorists and they are all 
anxious to put their theories into practice at 
whatever costs to international and diplomatic 
traditions. 

This Russia Germany can control and Ger- 
many may safely develop; this Russia would be 
an asset and not a liability, a solution of the 
German economic problem so adequate that she 
might snap her fingers at defeat and see Belgium 

95 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

restored, Constantinople neutralized or lost. 
The strategy of defeat would become in large 
measure superfluous and the democratic defen- 
sive far less imperative. For the future her posi- 
tion would be secure. Communication between 
them would be entirely within their control, for 
both the railroad lines and the approaches by sea 
would be inside the German defenses, invulner- 
able to assault by the sea power and with the 
whole of Germany between hostile armies and 
the Russian communications. Should the Allies 
win and attempt to foreclose Germany access to 
the outside world, prevent her contact with 
South America and the Far East, Germany 
might then foreclose their access to Russia. She 
would have something to barter. There would 
be a section of the world which she herself would 
economically control, a great market to which 
the Allies had been accustomed to sell and which 
would be as regrettable a loss to their merchants 
as German access to South America. Here Ger- 
man capital and skill might utilize Russian man 
power in the erection of an economic structure 
complementary to Germany, which should avoid 
all competition with the existing German struct- 
ure and with which the latter should not com- 
pete, an economic fabric profitable to the Rus- 
sians, profitable to the Germans — continuously 
profitable — permanently profitable. 

Whatever the origin, therefore, of the Revolu- 
tion, whatever the intention of Germany to 
create it, to foster it in the beginning, there can 
be no doubt that at present the German Govern- 

96 



UTILIZING THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 

ment is resolved at all costs to take control of 
it and to establish there in the hands of its own 
agents the sort of an economic and military 
state which will be useful to Germany. This, too, 
less for the present than for the future. The 
military strength of Russia the Germans had 
already discounted. Two years ago they 
announced that the army was broken and its 
reorganization impossible. Nor were they far 
wrong. The industrial fabric was exhausted and 
never had had the ability to maintain such an 
army; the railroad system was entirely incapable 
of carrying the volume of traffic required by the 
military authorities; and the industrial fabric 
was unable to replace the railroad equipment 
worn out by the heavy traffic of war. The edu- 
cated class in Russia could supply only a dis- 
tinctly limited number of officers, and, as no 
modern army can exist without adequate officers, 
the vast peasant population could not produce 
another effective army. The Revolution did not 
remove Russia from the military arena. It 
merely completed a work already begun and 
made it rather more decisive than it would other- 
wise have been. 

At the same time, it is idle to deny that the 
Russian Revolution possesses an immense imme- 
diate significance in the prosecution of the war, 
for it makes possible the addition of Russia's 
economic resources to those of Germany, the per- 
fection of the German economic defensive during 
the war, and the impossibility of a victory for the 
Allies by economic exhaustion. In a measure, 

97 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

it may be said, this acquisition of Russian re- 
sources offsets the addition to the Allies of the 
economic wealth of the United States. True, 
the latter's resources are far more considerable, 
but it must be remembered that in the past they 
have been to a very large extent already at the 
disposal of the Allies, and what the latter are 
receiving now is not the total of the economic 
equation of the United States, but merely that 
additional increment due to the co-operation 
brought about by government action. This is 
an amount far less than its total economic power, 
while whatever economic assistance Germany re- 
ceives from Russia is positive gain, relatively the 
more important on account of the blockade and 
on account of the straits to which she has hitherto 
been driven. The moral effect upon Germany 
is certainly incalculably greater than any pos- 
sible military exploit could be. It will convince 
the people of the Central Empires that defeat 
from economic exhaustion during the war is im- 
possible and that in all probability the tactics 
proposed by the Allied Economic Conference at 
Paris will in the future be unavailing to destroy 
German trade. 

We must certainly not delude ourselves into 
supposing that the Germans believe that the 
Russian economic power is to be immediately 
available. They are as well aware as we should 
be that part of the Russian failure during the 
war has been due to the weakness of her economic 
fabric, which the war itself — and now the Revo- 
lution — has rendered even more disorganized 

98 



UTILIZING THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 

than ever. Should the new Government agree 
to hand over the factories to the working-men 
to operate in a socialistic manner, this weakness 
would become even more considerable. Should 
the peasants be given the land, as seems at pres- 
ent probable, the cultivation of grain would 
greatly increase, and it is food rather than manu- 
factured goods which the Germans want. In 
any case, time must elapse before the economic 
resources of Russia can be of even moderate value 
to them. They must organize production; they 
must provide for adequate transportation be- 
tween Russia and Germany; and — a vital ele- 
ment in the situation to be thoroughly borne in 
mind — the German railroads as well as the Rus- 
sian have suffered from the wear and tear of the 
war and from the inability to turn the factories 
which formerly produced railroad material aside 
from work on munitions. 

The preoccupation of the Russian people, too, 
with socialistic schemes, the disorganization of 
the Government, of the credit and financial 
structure, will also very much hinder prompt and 
adequate Russian aid to the Germans, but there 
should be no doubt that in the long run German 
ability will solve this problem, if not directly, 
then indirectly. Russia is sown with German 
spies. German agents are to be found in every 
counting-house, in every factory, in every village, 
and, if the German Government cannot openly 
undertake this great reconstruction, it can cer- 
tainly do so through the hands of the Invisible 
Army, whose functions and importance were 

99 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

never greater than at this moment. Indeed, it is 
more than probable that, after six months more 
of relative anarchy, the peasants will be glad to 
receive direction from the competent hands of 
the German secret agents, the more so because 
the true character of these agents will not be 
realized. Nor must it be forgotten by those of 
us on the outside that the Germans can well 
afford to provide Russia with excellent and stable 
government, with an efficient economic organi- 
zation, with an adequate and impartial adminis- 
tration of justice such as Russia in the whole of 
her history has never known. They can afford 
to do it at a minimum cost and can thus confer 
a very real and lasting benefit which the Russians 
are incapable of conferring upon themselves and 
with which the late dynasty never provided them. 
The renunciation of diplomatic and interna- 
tional schemes Germany would regard as the 
key of the new Rvissian policy. That Russia 
should have no ambition is far better than that 
she should cherish the type of ambition she 
formerly had. Therefore, if through the In- 
visible Army a really efficient organization of 
Russia's administration, agriculture, and indus- 
try can be made, Germany may control Russia 
in Russian interests for the benefit of Russia and 
to the detriment of the rest of the world, and, at 
the same time, without making it possible for 
the rest of the world to convince the Russians of 
what is being done. It must be remembered that 
the vast bulk of the Russian people cannot read, 

and receive their comprehension of the world it- 

100 



UTILIZING THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 

self, of their own Government, and of what is 
taking place, only by word of mouth from such 
people as they trust. The German agents are 
men whom unquestionably the peasants have long 
known, whom perhaps they have long trusted, 
or whom they can be easily, by the pressure of 
local administration and of local justice, per- 
suaded to trust with entire confidence. 

Pan-Germanism can also offer the Russians 
freely and without any price beyond loyalty in 
international relations the fulfilment of the old 
ambitions. Pan-Germany holds already the con- 
trol of the approaches to the Baltic and to the 
Black Sea and can assure the Russians of that 
very continuity of access which they have so de- 
sired. At their disposal will be the great German 
merchant marine; the German navy will be 
ready to fight their battles in the North Sea, as 
will the Turkish and Austrian in the Mediter- 
ranean. That for which the dynasty spent so 
much treasure and shed such rivers of blood can 
be had merely by the acceptance of terms which 
will seem entirely favorable and satisfactory to 
the new governors at Petrograd. Nor will they 
fail to appreciate the difference between the 
position of the dynasty after an Allied victory 
and their own after alliance with Pan-Germany. 
The Czar must have great armies and fleets to 
maintain possession of Constantinople against 
the Germans and would still be obliged to pass 
through a Baltic completely in German hands 
and through the entire German fleet at its 

mouth. He must have paid a great price for his 

101 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

new position and still face a relative inability to 
preserve it without the constant expenditure of 
more. The new rulers can actually attain more 
for no cost at all in men and treasure either to 
achieve or maintain, and, whereas the Czar was 
by no means positive of victory, they see that 
their acquisition of freedom of access is absolute. 
The mutual benefit of the agreement is the sure 
measure of its permanence. To receive they 
must give and the Germans can well afford to 
give good measure, pressed down and running 
over, for such an alteration of the European bal- 
ance of power as the continued loyalty of Rus- 
sia to Pan-Germany would create. 

No aspect of the situation is indeed more 
serious than the fact that the very virtues of the 
German Government may give Germany a con- 
trol of Russia which it may be impossible to 
break, which the Germans may exercise entirely 
for their own benefit and to the detriment of the 
rest of the world. For they may convince the 
Russians that the price they are paying for good 
administration, for impartial justice, and for the 
development of agriculture and industry — that 
is to say, the sacrifice of Russian imperialism — 
is indeed cheap compared to the price which the 
dynasty compelled them to pay for nothing at 
all. Thus the Revolution in the hands of the 
German Invisible Army would become a great 
success. Thus the new Russian Government 
would be organized with a minimum of difficulty 
and the maximum of benefit. 

There would be no moral scruples to stand in 
102 






UTILIZING THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 

the way. Those men who prove themselves in- 
capable of obedience to the German cause will 
suddenly disappear. Those measures which it 
becomes necessary to undertake will somehow 
or another be undertaken. If the Revolution 
itself could be bought, certainly the control of 
any peasant assembly can be paid for, if not in 
coin, in other things. The Germans are adepts 
in the paying of a price, in the buying of men. 
Nothing is required except determination, un- 
scrupulousness, and ingenuity, a conviction that 
all men are base and a willingness to take ad- 
vantage of it. It is idle for those of us who are 
determined to win this war and to destroy the 
German menace to nourish the delusion that these 
facts are not true and are not important. It is 
idle for us to believe that this type of menace is 
to be removed by military victory in France or 
by provisions written down on paper at a peace 
conference. The Germans have clearly seen 
that much more is involved in winning the war 
than military operations, and we too must be- 
come aware that it is to be won in many other 
places than in France, and that many more 
things are to be achieved than the restoration of 
Belgium and the reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine, 
if the destruction of German militarism is to be 
its result. 

In fact, now that the Russian Revolution has 
occurred, now that Russia is likely to come under 
the control of Germany herself, the German army 
may be disbanded and sent home. The Gov- 
ernment and the people may enthusiastically 

103 , 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

abolish militarism, for the menace on which it 
was based is now removed. What was previously 
Germany's deadly foe has now become her chief 
asset; what previously had to be done by the 
army in the field can now be trusted to the 
Invisible Army; what cost in the past hundreds 
of millions of marks may now be achieved at the 
price of millions, or indeed at nothing more than 
the cost of good government and thorough eco- 
nomic reorganization for Russia. The price is 
very easy to pay, cheap beyond all belief in com- 
parison with the benefits to be received. The 
German military machine will presently become, 
if the organization of Russia in this manner is 
successful, not only unnecessary, but inexpe- 
dient. It will be to Germany's advantage to 
turn her expenditure of money and material into 
the navy rather than into the army. If the 
Invisible Army can conquer Russia during the 
remainder of the war, Germany may face a 
military defeat on the Western Front and the 
abolition of militarism without fear. The war 
will have been won even though lost. The 
German economic, political, and international 
future will be secure. 



IX 

THE DEMOCRATIC DEFENSIVE 

NONE are more conscious than the Germans 
that in administrative centralization, and 
in the diplomatic, military, and naval powers of 
the Empire lie the true foundations of German 
international independence and of their ability 
to fight the war. None are more conscious than 
they that here is the vulnerable spot, the Achil- 
les heel of the Central Empires. Change the 
Prussian administrative question, change the 
Imperial constitution ever so slightly, and the 
result might well be fatal to the entire structure. 
That the Empire is an international and diplo- 
matic expedient rather than a political consti- 
tution they have long been aware. That it 
was neither entirely lovely nor of good report 
they also know. Yet the overwhelming majority 
of the people have voted since 1870 unhesitatingly 
and uncompromisingly for its maintenance. It 
is widely believed outside the Central Empires 
that a democratic revolution during the war 
would so cripple its prosecutors as to give the 
Allies an immediate victory; that a democratic 
constitution created at the end of the war would 

105 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

provide the necessary guarantee of security for 
the future. What resistance to such a weapon 
can the Germans oppose? Would it not be con- 
clusive and final for an Allied victory and an 
Allied peace? 

As Voltaire said of the old Holy Roman Em- 
pire that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor 
an empire, so it might be said of German federal 
Government that it is not in a racial sense Ger- 
man, nor in a constitutional sense federal, nor 
in an administrative sense a government at all. 
The present German Empire consists of certain 
sovereign states, all monarchies, which govern 
Germany partly through the federal Govern- 
ment, or Empire, but principally through the 
administrative, legislative, and judicial machin- 
ery of their own states. The Empire is not a 
government at all, because it possesses neither 
judicial nor executive nor, in the strictest sense, 
legislative machinery. It is rather the interna- 
tional representative of the German states, 
created and operated, not for domestic purposes, 
but for international policies, utilized by the 
Germans themselves as a useful organ of co- 
operative action in local government, but not 
intended primarily to serve that purpose or 
created with reference to it. 

Unquestionably and hopelessly undemocratic, 
because its object is not domestic and internal, 
but external and international, it therefore lacks 
the prime administrative purpose of a govern- 
ment in the American sense of the word. It 
lacks the necessary administrative and judicial 

106 



THE DEMOCRATIC DEFENSIVE 

machinery for carrying into effect the popular 
will. Indeed, the Imperial officials are compelled 
to rely upon the states for the execution of im- 
perial legislation. The true operative force of 
the Empire is a secret executive council, com- 
posed of the delegates of the sovereign states, 
all of which are monarchies. The members of 
this Bundesrat have no representative capacity 
of their own, nor do they vote as their own dis- 
cretion dictates; they constantly receive and 
must await explicit orders from their own home 
governments. Really the German states them- 
selves direct the executive and foreign policy of 
the Empire. 

The Imperial compromise as Bismarck created 
it was, therefore, an attempt to retain a league 
of sovereign states, each of which should possess 
complete autonomy and administrative inde- 
pendence, and which demanded, therefore, the 
right and privilege of enforcing both their own 
and the Imperial laws. To create an Imperial 
administration was, therefore, impossible. The 
Empire and the states could not at the same time 
possess sovereignty nor exercise full adminis- 
trative powers. Moreover, the small states 
must be left in the legal control of the Imperial 
machinery because the overweening size and 
importance of Prussia had hitherto prevented 
them from co - operating in any scheme of 
federal government at all. At the same time 
Bismarck saw that a unit must be built capa- 
ble in external affairs of prompt action, of 
continuity of policy, of military efficiency, and 

8 107 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

an organ as well for co-operation between the 
German states themselves, effective beyond 
doubt, but permissive rather than compulsory. 
Such was the Empire — a peculiarly subtle com- 
promise between the German past and the Ger- 
man present. 

To give Germany a central government, a real 
administrative system, and to place the control 
of the administration in the hands of such a 
democratic regime as England and the United 
States possess, would abolish the present control 
of administrative agencies by the states, and thus 
in German phrase mediatize them — that is to 
say, deprive them of their true sovereignty. To 
make the Reichstag a truly important body, to 
reduce the Bundesrat to the position of a second 
chamber, to make the Imperial Chancellor and 
Ministry responsible to the Reichstag in the 
English and in the French sense, would abso- 
lutely destroy the chief feature of this subtle 
government, and end the rule of Germany by 
an executive council of princes. It would as 
promptly mediatize and destroy the sovereign 
power of all the kings and princes. No German 
army as such legally exists, for each state still 
possesses an army of its own, although by virtue 
of certain treaties the direction and organization 
of all the armies is confided to Prussia. To make 
the army an Imperial army under the constitu- 
tional control of the Imperial legislature, as in 
England, France, and the United States, would 
abolish the present sovereign control of each state 
over its army and give the new Government an 

108 



THE DEMOCRATIC DEFENSIVE 

extended power which Prussia now does not 
possess. 

If, then, the Reichstag, becoming the control- 
ling element in the Government, should be re- 
organized by a new apportionment of seats, Prus- 
sia would become almost the sole constitutional 
force in Germany, the present lesser states would 
be practically absorbed into it, and their inde- 
pendence to all intents and purposes lost. The 
present arrangement gives Prussia only one- 
third of the votes in the Bundesrat and hence has 
left the small states always the ability to over- 
rule her, except on certain vital issues upon which 
she possesses a veto. She can now usually pre- 
vent something from being done, but she can 
rarely take action without the consent and co- 
operation of the other states. Such an immense 
increase in the authority and power of Prussia 
would be entirely contrary to the notions of 
Imperial government as entertained by the states. 
If, then, the Prussian Government itself should 
be reformed by the introduction of universal suf- 
frage on the French and American plan, the 
abolition of the three-class system and of oral 
voting, the whole basis of that constitution 
would be at once changed. • The control would be 
taken not alone from the propertied classes, but 
from the men who believe in the subordination 
of political reforms to international necessity, 
who see the Prussian Imperial system as an in- 
ternational fact rather than a domestic adminis- 
tration, and would supposedly give control to the 
democratic and socialistic elements who would 

109 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

further these changes in local government at the 
cost of Germany's defensive strength and inter- 
national influence. 

So, too, the German Empire, like the Prussian 
state, has been hitherto independent financially of 
any yearly vote of taxes by a legislative chamber. 
To introduce the democratic rule of the British, 
French, and American governments, of financial 
responsibility to a popular chamber elected by 
universal suffrage, and thus create the necessity of 
passing annually a budget without which the 
Government could not function at all, would 
practically destroy the machinery of the Empire 
and of the Prussian state as they now exist. To 
weaken Prussia, it has been often said, we have 
merely to put the democrats and Socialists on the 
throne; to destroy the Empire, we have merely 
to weaken Prussia, which is its backbone; to 
destroy the efficiency of the army we have 
merely to emasculate the Prussian administra- 
tive and executive supremacy. For two genera- 
tions students in Germany and in foreign coun- 
tries have agreed that the success of the Empire 
and of the Prussian Government, the heart and 
the soul of the present Germany, lies in the con- 
trolling and directive influences exercised by 
Prussia through the peculiarities of the present 
Imperial constitution. It is this democratic de- 
fensive which the Allies have announced their 
intention of employing against Germany. 

What conceivable defense in case of defeat 

can Germany offer to such a use of the weapon of 

democracy? Would it not effect finally and de- 

110 



THE DEMOCRATIC DEFENSIVE 

cisively what armies can only approximate? 
The German leaders think they see an answer in 
the case of France in 1814. Then she lay help- 
less and disorganized before the allies marching 
on Paris; the army beaten, Napoleon ready to ab- 
dicate, the people disloyal and her foes possessed 
of an entire willingness to weaken and destroy 
her by requiring indemnities and territorial con- 
cessions. Talleyrand pointed out to the French 
leaders that the country could be saved from the 
exaction of the reckoning for the Napoleonic con- 
quests only by a principle, the principle of legit- 
imate monarchy in the persons of the Bourbons. 
For that principle her enemies had fought; to 
it they were officially pledged; by it alone could 
their designs be frustrated and brought to 
naught. France had only to restore the Bour- 
bons in advance of this final conquest and the 
allies would be helpless, bound fast by the chains 
of their own logical principles. And so it 
proved. The statesmen of the allies chafed and 
fretted, but, consider as they might, they could 
see no way out of the dilemma save a new war. 
Not so could they afford to offend their own 
people and outrage the decency of Europe. 

So to-day for Germany the only salvation, the 
only defense against the destruction of Germany's 
international power by democracy, the German 
leaders believe, is to adopt the principle in ad- 
vance before it can be forced upon them, to de- 
clare Germany penitent in the matter of abso- 
lutism and militarism before the real control of 

the internal situation passes from their hands 

in 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

into those of their enemies, that is to say, before 
the defeat becomes final. The reform of Prus- 
sian and Imperial government by the introduc- 
tion of the democratic principles commonly ac- 
cepted in Great Britain, France, and the United 
States would at once defeat the purposes of the 
present Allies as certainly as the recall of the 
Bourbons hampered the purposes of the allies 
in 1814. From a democratic government os- 
tensibly created by the German people through 
revolution, controlled for the moment by the 
proscribed Liberal and Socialist leaders, few con- 
cessions could in all honesty be exacted which 
the German people could not thankfully accept. 
Certainly none of those demands could be coun- 
tenanced in the name of democracy which could 
be made from a government still under the con- 
trol of the Hohenzollerns and administered in ac- 
cordance with the present constitution of the 
Empire. Perhaps all territorial concessions could 
be avoided; an indemnity certainly might be 
prevented; much of the bitterness of the war 
could thus be removed. In any case there could 
be no humiliation of Germany. 

Would not such a democratic reform in Ger- 
many bring into power in Great Britain, France, 
and the United States a strong party, already in 
existence (fostered, by the way, by the German 
Invisible Army itself), favoring no territorial 
cessions, no indemnities, no humiliating guar- 
antees? Thus aid could be found in the enemy 
nations for the German campaign for a mild and 

honorable peace, for a peace which would neither 

112 



THE DEMOCRATIC DEFENSIVE 

weaken nor crush Germany, should neither place 
her in a position where her influence in interna- 
tional affairs would be negligible, nor force upon 
her a sort of government which would make 
effective administrative initiative impossible. 

Of course, the political compromise, the in- 
ternational settlement effected by Bismarck; the 
old Empire, would, as anticipated, have been de- 
stroyed. The Hohenzollerns themselves would 
in all probability need to be sacrificed; the 
smaller kings and princes would naturally have 
been mediatized; and the small states to all 
intents and purposes absorbed politically into 
Prussia. So much would be regrettable, but 
the result would scarcely be calamitous. The 
true purpose of the Bismarckian compromise 
had been already achieved. Had it not been 
meant to grapple with the difficulties and the 
conditions existing in 1870? Had not the Ger- 
man people and the German states effectively 
outgrown them? Had not the power, intelli- 
gence, and importance of Prussia to the safety 
of Germany itself been only too well proved, 
and could not now the small states with some- 
thing approximating resignation submit in the 
interest of the Fatherland? Was it not true that, 
however sweeping and extensive the changes in 
the form of German government might be, the 
reality need in no sense be altered? The ex- 
pected political, administrative, economic, and 
military result, the weakening of Germany in- 
ternally and internationally, might be easily 
frustrated by the German people themselves. 

113 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

The German leaders see that the remedy of 
democracy rests for its effect in favor of the 
Allies upon the assumption that the democratic 
Liberals and Socialists will have a strong ma- 
jority in the new state and will still retain, after 
defeat in the war, after being placed in control 
of the new state, that leaning toward political 
reform at the expense of international and 
diplomatic prestige which has characterized them 
in the past. They see also that the Allies assume 
that the new Government will be a weak Gov- 
ernment and will prevent prompt and rapid 
action and efficient co-operation because the 
democratic governments with which they them- 
selves are familiar have been inefficient and slow, 
because democratic government in Great Bri- 
tain, in France, and in the United States has 
been the history of muddling through, of cor- 
rupt statesmen, of inefficient delays, of costly 
experiments. They assume that the history 
of democracy in Germany will necessarily be 
similar. 

The German leaders correctly appreciate that 
the key to the situation is the attitude of the 
German people themselves. If the majority are, 
as the Allies claim, hostile to the Kaiser and to 
militarism, and if they do prefer liberal govern- 
ment in Germany to the Empire, domestic de- 
centralization to international prestige, then in- 
deed the Allies will have won. But if they see 
in democracy, as the German leaders expect, 
humiliation for Germany, loss of international 
status, the imposition upon the German people 



THE DEMOCRATIC DEFENSIVE 

of a new form of government in order to destroy 
their international prestige, then the old line 
between the democrats, the liberals, the con- 
servatives will be wiped out. The whole nation 
will be united in the determination to effect 
through the new democratic machine that same 
efficient, prompt co-operation which the old 
autocratic machine produced. The great German 
weapon against such a democratic assault lies 
in the true democracy of Germany, in the Ger- 
mans themselves, in the educated intelligence 
of the German population, in its habit of co- 
operation, in its comprehension of the value and 
meaning of discipline, in its readiness to do the 
expedient thing rather than the theoretical, in 
its conviction of the indispensable necessity of 
international independence for Germany and 
its priority in German politics, both local and 
Imperial, over any other issue. Only by the 
aid of the majority of the German people them- 
selves, the leaders believe, can the Allied plan 
of imposing democracy on Germany be success- 
ful and result in the weakening of state and 
army, in rendering Germany internationally less 
powerful. 

Similarly, the German democratic defensive 
can fail only if the majority of the people refuse 
to co-operate. For what again does the deposi- 
tion and exiling of the Hohenzollerns stand than 
the attempt to drive from Germany her military 
and diplomatic leaders, to force her to place her 
Government in the hands of less experienced 
men, and compel her to train and educate new 

115 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

rulers? This can easily be frustrated by the 
simple devices of American party government, 
with which the Germans are thoroughly familiar. 
The men who direct policy need not hold office 
nor need they even reside in Germany, so long 
as the elected officials are still willing to look to 
them for leadership. 

The German High Command can see no reason 
whatever why a campaign of publicity through 
Germany, explaining the object of the democratic 
offensive of the Allies, should not enable them 
to continue all the essential features of the present 
arrangement under the new democratic machin- 
ery. The sort of political agreement common in 
English and American parties would provide, as 
used, for instance, in the southern part of the 
United States, exactly that opportunity for the 
giving of mutual guarantees, for mutual consul- 
tation outside legal assemblies by means of which 
the true efficiency of the old Government could 
be continued. If the new legal Government 
should prove itself really inefficient, it might 
practically be dispensed with and the real con- 
trol of affairs carried on by secret committees of 
the old officials, who would call themselves, in 
true American fashion, a party. A national 
party for the Empire as a whole might also be 
created in whose committees solemn pledges 
might be exchanged with the smaller states to 
prevent the full effect of their mediatiza- 
tion, the loss of their full independence. Local 
autonomy might be conferred upon all present 
administrative divisions and in the guise of 

116 



THE DEMOCRATIC DEFENSIVE 

party politics the administrative machinery of 
the older states might be continued under demo- 
cratic forms. If the true heads of the state 
could not be elected, they might continue in 
power as political bosses. 

What indeed could prevent it? Had the elec- 
toral machinery in America ever been able 
thoroughly to defeat the machinations of parties? 
Had the English Parliament ever been able to 
free itself from the power of the two party ma- 
chines? Was not the influence of the Home- 
rulers entirely due to the defects of this same 
party government? Certainly, administrative 
confusion could thus be prevented, the loss of 
the specialized information of its experienced 
officials obviated. Certainly a sufficiently in- 
telligent campaign could prevent the revival 
and extension of the old political hatreds and 
jealousies. 

Nor would such a democratic government be 
necessarily permanent. To achieve the original 
purpose of such a democratic defensive — the pro- 
curing of milder terms of peace than could in any 
other way be secured — it must be done with a 
convincing array of detail and it must be pre- 
served long enough to prevent any claims of bad 
faith. But after ten years it would be possible 
to reform it, and in reforming it to destroy it. 
The necessary breathing-space for the recovery of 
Germany would have been secured, the vindictive 
plans of its enemies would have been defeated. 
The great issue could be raised once more by re- 
storing the Empire in case it had been found in 

117 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

the mean time impossible to achieve results with- 
out it. What mattered ten years or fifty? Time 
might be essential. Time would now work in 
favor of Germany, whose strength was waxing as 
that of her adversaries waned. 



THE BASIS OF GERMAN CONFIDENCE 

THAT the Germans are still confident of vic- 
tory is easier to disbelieve than to disprove. 
Nor do the more experienced and conservative 
observers on the Allied side deny the existence of 
this confidence. Indeed, they have deplored sin- 
cerely the persistent effort to encourage people by 
assuring them that the Germans already believe 
themselves beaten. There can, indeed, be no one 
thing so important to realize about the present 
situation, so thoroughly significant to remember 
in connection with the attainment of victory for 
the Allies, than this fact that the Germans still, 
now in the fourth year of the war, in spite of all 
that has taken place, believe themselves certain 
to win. One has merely to talk with a few 
German- Americans who are still unconverted, 
who are neither terrorized by the German state 
nor deprived of adequate information, to realize 
the truth of this statement. 

Unquestionably the basis of German con- 
fidence is to be found in their conviction of the 
superiority of scientific calculation over muddling 
through, of knowledge over ignorance, of fore- 
thought over careless expedients, of ruthlessness 

119 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

over "the English mouthing about humanity." 
They are fully conscious of the great odds against 
them in men and resources. They are well 
aware of the existence of the blockade and of the 
participation of the United States, but they know 
these complications were foreseen, and that, 
after a long period of preparation, the High Com- 
mand nevertheless undertook an aggressive war 
with full confidence of victory. They regarded 
it as scarcely probable that the issue would have 
been opened at all without the knowledge that 
all exigencies had been provided for. Upon the 
Invisible Army they also rely. They believe 
that they are proceeding with the most exact 
knowledge of the organization of their enemies 
and have, therefore, been able to determine scien- 
tifically the proper ratio of German strength 
which victory will require. They believe them- 
selves able to continue the war with a full knowl- 
edge of the enemies' plans, and think that they 
have already created a powerful ally in the peace 
movement in England, France, and the United 
States. 

If they lose, it will be, they think, because 
exact information, coupled with elaborate system 
and method, utilized with prevision and fore- 
knowledge, is incapable of estimating correctly 
the resources and capabilities of great bodies of 
men. If any intangible human factor not easily 
measured and enumerated enters into the calcu- 
lation, the Germans are positive that the ad- 
vantage lies on their side. They see themselves 

as a people disciplined to war, consecrated to hard- 

120 



THE BASIS OF GERMAN CONFIDENCE 

ship, ready to do whatever is necessary to win. 
No silly sentimentality, no paper promises, will 
interfere with their notions of expedient action. 
This they consider a great advantage. War is 
not a game, nor yet a sport, still less an ethical 
exercise or an attempt to project spirituality 
into some dim future. The prosecution of war 
consists in the exercising of force in the most 
advantageous way. 

The second fact upon which they rely with 
confidence is the definite unity of purpose with 
which they and their allies entered the war. 
All of its objectives were determined beforehand; 
upon all definitive agreement had been reached; 
nothing was left but the execution of the plan 
itself, and even upon that essential agreement 
was not difficult. This definite unity of aim has 
made possible the unified direction of the war by 
the High Command, has made feasible military 
campaigns for military purposes, and the assist- 
ance of the army with such diplomatic measures 
as were necessary, without, on the other hand, 
sacrificing the prosecution of the war in an en- 
deavor to achieve diplomatic ends. 

While the military situation is somewhat dif- 
ferent from that originally expected, the new 
strategy of victory, the Germans feel, is making 
as rapid progress as is expedient from a military 
point of view and certainly as swift as was de- 
sirable in view of the strategy of defeat. Time 
is essential properly to weaken Belgium, Poland, 
Serbia, and Rumania, whether they are to be use- 
ful to the Central Empires in the future as pos- 

121 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

sessions of their own or whether they are to be 
economically penetrated after they have been 
handed back to the political domination of their 
enemies. In the west, the trench line has held 
invulnerable. Here and there, at enormous costs 
of men and material, it has been dented, but such 
offensives have made possible the scientific deci- 
mation of the French army in a manner which the 
Germans believe has been entirely successful. 
Already they think the French begin to realize 
that they may win the war only to lose it. 

That the Allies can break through the trench 
line the Germans do not believe, and, even if they 
should break through, the Germans can not see 
how the result could be more serious than the 
withdrawal of the present line to one already 
prepared further in the rear. The offensive of 
Haig against Cambrai toward the end of No- 
vember, 1917, was a surprise, but not a danger, 
because the Germans had never admitted that 
one position in France rather than another was of 
value, aside from the fact that it gave them con- 
trol of French territory, allowed them to utilize 
French resources, deprived the French of them, 
and made possible the scientific destruction of 
permanent improvements which time and ma- 
terial would be needed to repair after the war. 
The loss of ground might also have consequence 
if it should affect the morale of the people or of 
the army, but short of that they saw no reason 
why one acre of ground was better than another 
nor why the whole trench line should not slowly 

yield before the British and French pressure. 

122 



THE BASIS OF GERMAN CONFIDENCE 

At the rate of the recent offenses they could af- 
ford easily to continue to yield for two or three 
years without reaching any point from which the 
German frontier itself could be attacked. To 
yield rather than to defend a trench line would 
always be good policy because the offensive in 
France was long ago given up and any truly 
adequate defense involved the sacrifice of more 
men than the Germans could afford to lose. No, 
the British and French might have all the French 
soil they were willing to pay for in blood, money, 
and iron. Besides, it could always be recovered, 
as this was. 

If an unusually dangerous and extensive at- 
tack had been planned, involving unusually elab- 
orate preparation, a retreat could always prevent 
the delivery of the assault itself and make worth- 
less the extended preparation. And, inasmuch 
as before the recent drive of Haig no attack had 
been successful without the construction of 
special railroads and a readiness to move large 
artillery, such a strategic retreat as was executed 
in February of 1917 could always prevent the 
renewal of such a definitive assault for months 
and thus win time for the process of the new 
strategy of victory and the new strategy of de- 
feat. Not even the loss of all Belgium and 
France, the German authorities feel, can affect 
the issue of the war. So long as the German 
army is undefeated and the German frontier un- 
crossed, the issue of the war is safe. 

Nor could swifter or more decisive progress have 

been made in the execution of the new strategy 
9 123 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

of victory. Poland was crushed in 1915; the 
Russian army destroyed in the summer of 1916; 
Serbia crushed in the autumn of 1915; Rumania 
in the autumn of 1916; and Italy now in the au- 
tumn and winter of 1917 is already in process of 
annihilation. In the cases of Poland, Serbia, 
and Rumania, the work of the High Command 
was rapid and unexpectedly decisive, and in all 
the systematic attrition of the population and the 
destruction of resources have continued apace. 
Within another year it will certainly have reached 
the point beyond which nothing more can be de- 
sired. If the Italian campaign can be brought 
to a successful conclusion this winter it will then 
be possible to begin the great move on France 
next summer. Surely nothing more than this 
could have been asked ; surely the great victories 
in Poland, in Rumania, and in Italy offset, so far 
as the morale of the German people and of the 
German army is concerned, any retirement that 
may become necessary in Flanders or in France. 
So far as time is necessary for the execution 
of the campaigns against Italy and for other prep- 
arations against it which will make the final 
campaign against France decisive, that time is 
now assured. The Russian Revolution put an 
end to all fears that the blockade might accom- 
plish the starvation of the Central Empires. It 
may be that for some time rations will continue 
short, but in the long run the Invisible Army 
may be counted upon to take control of Russia 
and to add her economic resources to those of 
the Central Empires during the war. If not 

124 



THE BASIS OF GERMAN CONFIDENCE 

next spring, at least next autumn, food from 
Russia is to be expected. Moreover, the release 
of the prisoners of war at present held in Russia, 
or, if preferred, the exchange of the German and 
Russian prisoners, would at once more than 
counterbalance the arrival of the new American 
army expected in the spring. For the prisoners 
returning from Russia would be trained troops, 
captured in the earlier years of the war, while 
the Americans would still be raw material. The 
danger, therefore, that time alone might defeat 
the Central Powers has been reduced to a mini- 
mum. The lines in the west can now be held 
indefinitely, the Germans boast; Germany can 
prolong the war without limit of time. 

The submarine, too, has made satisfactory 
progress in sinking Allied shipping, the Germans 
feel. Already the losses are greater than the 
ship-building during the war can replace and 
greater than the loss to Germany of her interned 
ships confiscated in the various neutral harbors 
when Allied diplomacy induced the United 
States, South America, and China to enter the 
war. Thus the reduction of the ratio of the 
British merchant marine to the German is 
actually proceeding apace, and, if the war lasts 
long enough, may be literally accomplished. 
The Germans also feel that British dominion 
on the seas is already destroyed by the creation 
of the great American merchant marine. That 
Great Britain would have ever allowed the 
United States to build a large sea-going fleet 
the Germans refuse to believe. It has been per- 

125 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

mitted as a war measure for the saving of Great 
Britain herself, but will have, when the war is 
once ended, the effect of reducing the extent of 
British supremacy upon the sea. No longer will 
it be true that the only great merchant fleet 
flies the British flag. Other great fleets will 
also sail the seas, and, however large the British 
fleet may be, it will no longer remain the only 
one of great size. 

The Germans feel that there is something 
more than hope that the submarine will prevent 
the transportation and maintenance of the new 
American army, except at the price of impairing 
the military efficiency of the Allied armies in 
France and in Italy. To supply the American 
army, the Allied armies, and at the same time 
not affect the steady stream of food and raw 
materials going to England, to France, and to 
Italy, will be exceedingly difficult. Both France 
and Italy are literally dependent for coal on 
England and the United States. The work of 
the submarine has already made the burden 
very great, and the Germans rely upon it to 
make it greater. The railroads in France and 
Italy also are showing the wear and tear of the 
war. It is even essential that the American 
troops should be provided with rail connections 
with the coast from their own country main- 
tained by American supplies and operated by 
American mechanics. For the repair of the 
strategic lines used by the armies, France and 
Italy are again dependent upon supplies brought 
by sea from the United States and England. 

126 



THE BASIS OF GERMAN CONFIDENCE 

Is it not probable, the Germans ask, that the 
potency of the submarine will be sufficiently 
great to interfere with the adequacy of some of 
these dispositions? Is it not true that if any 
one ceases to be effective, the result will be a 
material weakening of the military strength of 
the Allies? 

As for the United States, the German High 
Command does not expect that the American 
army in Europe will be of sufficient size for many 
months to be a peril. If an army of real size 
is transported — that is to say, at least a million 
men, they cannot believe that the troops will 
be of good quality. If the private soldiers are 
good — and this they readily believe possible— 
the officers will not be sufficiently experienced 
to be able to handle them. If the officers are 
trained, there will still be the necessary support 
from the artillery to await. The Germans well 
know that artillery officers are not to be trained 
in a brief time, as the British and French also 
realize from their own sad experience in the 
early months of the war. Artillery defense can- 
not be extemporized, and the accuracy of ar- 
tillery fire is a matter of the utmost significance. 
But if an American army of real size, of real 
quality, with adequate artillery should be trans- 
ported to France, it would be on account of its 
size correspondingly difficult to maintain. The 
burden upon Allied shipping would be corre- 
spondingly greater and the economic burden upon 
the people of the United States would assume 
huge proportions. 

127 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

Not only must everything go well in the draft- 
ing and training of the army and its officers, not 
only must everything proceed scientifically and 
rapidly in the construction of its necessary equip- 
ment of arms and of artillery, of clothing and of 
food, not only must the necessary reorganization 
of industry and of railroad transportation be 
made which will permit the maintenance of such 
an army in France from the United States itself, 
but the ships must be provided to carry the men 
and their subsequent supplies. No link in this 
chain must break and in it are several links sus- 
pected of something rather more than weakness. 
The most essential point still is that of ship- 
building and in that the least progress has been 
made and the least effective dispositions seem to 
have been created. To the discovery of the nec- 
essarily weak links in this chain the Invisible 
Army in America has long been devoting its time. 
The High Command counts upon the destruction 
of ships, of munitions, of food, of factories, and 
the like. The Invisible Army is never to the 
Germans an instrument whose aid is merely de- 
sirable. It is the very first line of the German 
defense, the army which stops the offensive be- 
fore it is begun, which meets bullets with ballots, 
which with a few shavings and a little gasolene 
accomplishes more destruction than an entire 
German army corps could undertake in a week, 
which may save by the destruction of munitions 
possibly more German lives than the ending of 
the war a month sooner might effect. Best of 
all, the American people seem not, to German 

128 



THE BASIS OF GERMAN CONFIDENCE 

thinking, to have been aroused to the importance 
of the presence of this Invisible Army. All the 
better. May they for a thousand years remain 
blind and deaf! 

There can be no question, either, but that the 
German High Command is counting upon the 
services of the Invisible Army in the division 
of public sentiment in the United States by the 
rousing of the old Anti-Federalist hostility to 
Great Britain. The one thing which they see of 
most danger to them is unity among the Allies, 
unity of purpose, unity of action. The one de- 
pends upon the other. Therefore they must fos- 
ter all possible differences between the Allies. 
Nothing seems to them as promising as the Anti- 
British propaganda in the United States. Al- 
ready the Irish and German societies, the Scan- 
dinavian and Slavic societies, are organized on a 
great scale. And all of these the Invisible Army 
will effectively utilize. The mere fact that the 
great bulk of Americans are not descended from 
parents of British origin, they feel, should suffice 
to make this propaganda all but universally suc- 
cessful. 

As for the economic and diplomatic offensives 
of the Allies, Germany regards them almost as 
good as beaten. The economic defensive, al- 
ready adequate, was put beyond all question by 
the Russian Revolution and the acquisition of 
Rumania. And the Germans maintain that the 
war itself, conducted in accordance with the 
strategy of defeat and the fortunate circumstance 
of the Russian Revolution, may win the objective 

129 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

for which it was begun, even though it be lost 
in the field. Mittel-Europa is a free-will associa- 
tion of peoples who find it desirable for economic, 
political, and administrative reasons to co-oper- 
ate. No such state could be made by force, or 
continued by military or administrative pressure, 
still less made permanent unless the reality of 
co-operation and of interest existed. So long as 
the people themselves decide to co-operate and 
find it possible so to do, no constitutional jugglery 
called democracy, no scraps of paper signed by 
diplomats and called peace, no artificial boun- 
dary lines created at the dictation of foreign 
powers, can prevent such economic, political, and 
administrative co-operation. The consensus of 
public opinion in its favor is all that is necessary. 
If that does not exist scarcely anything is power- 
ful enough to create it. If it does exist, all the 
forces in the world cannot change it. 

And the war has created it. The bitter jeal- 
ousies of the ante-bellum period, the Germans 
feel, have been largely wiped out by the fact 
of the war itself, and defeat would utterly 
demolish them. The Austrians, the Hungarians, 
the Balkan nations, the Turks, far better appre- 
ciate than before the importance of co-operation 
between them, the strength and extent of their 
common interests, the weakness or superficial 
character of the old traditional antipathies and 
hatreds. No such disunion as obtained before 
the war can ever exist after it, the Germans de- 
clare. Mittel-Europa, the Pan-Germanic Con- 
federation, is already a fact because the unity of 

130 




©STOCKHOLMS"^ 

da/ 



^CONQUERED TERRITORY 




CENTRAL EUROPE 



THE BASIS OF GERMAN CONFIDENCE 

determination to create it, the consensus of 
opinion as to its desirability and expediency, are 
already facts. 

The war is already won because the future 
market, continuously expanding with the growth 
of German production, is already assured, not 
only within the Pan-Germanic Confederation 
itself, but in Russia. There the Revolution 
has removed those compelling military and 
diplomatic dangers which had hitherto domi- 
nated German strategy and policies. The de- 
velopment of Russia has now become safe; 
commercial alliance with Russia has now become 
possible; the conquest of Russia by the In- 
visible Army the Germans already believe to be 
a fact. The war has already been won because, 
whatever the military outcome, the real counter- 
poise to the German and Austrian power in the 
east is already destroyed. Russia as a diplo- 
matic and military entity has in all probability 
ceased to exist for a quarter of a century. If 
she does recover, that she will revive her former 
policies and alliances the Germans believe im- 
probable. The old Europe is gone, destroyed 
by the war. Where Germany and Austria- 
Hungary were once will now stand a compact 
federation of peoples, thoroughly organized, 
firmly united. On the one side will be a dis- 
organized and anarchistic state, and on the other, 
France, devastated by the war, economically 
weakened by the strategy of defeat; Great Bri- 
tain, also weakened by the war, with her strategic 
position lost through the fall of Russia; Italy 

131 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

commercially dependent upon other countries, 
hopelessly in debt, and broken by the war. 

Had it not always been declared before the 
war that the loss of Russia to the Triple Entente 
would alone make the Pan-Germanic Confed- 
eration a reality and the decisive, dominant 
force of Europe for half a century? Did not the 
Russian Revolution as decisively accomplish 
that fact as any defection of pre-revolutionary 
Russia would have done? Did not the old bal- 
ance of power become from henceforth impos- 
sible? Are not France, Great Britain, and Italy 
now incapable of producing a union in Europe 
which can save them from eventual extermina- 
tion at the hands of the new confederation, or 
is it to be supposed that in the future they can 
decline her diplomatic advances .for a proper 
settlement of Africa, Asia, and South America? 

The Germans look upon the war as decided. 
The military operations continue merely to de- 
termine the extent of the victory. France and 
England are not only beaten, but crushed. 
Shall the massive British Empire, whose firm 
organization might be truly perilous to the 
Germans, be made impossible? Shall Germany 
become not only the predominating, the pre- 
ponderant power in Europe, but dominant and 
regnant? Shall she rule the seas as well as the 
land? Shall the defeat include the United States 
and among the spoils enumerate South America? 



BOOK II 

THE POSTPONEMENT OF ALLIED 
VICTORY 



XI 

THE HEAVY COST OF OPTIMISM 

NO sooner had the battle of the Marne given 
the Allies a moment to catch breath than 
they began proudly and exultantly to compute 
their fundamental superiority over the Central 
Empires and to base upon it a logic of victory. 
Their superiority in man power was almost un- 
believably great, the power of their economic 
fabrics combined scarcely less astonishing, the 
strength of their financial and credit structures 
almost unbelievably greater. When the total 
area of the countries involved was added to the 
size and value of their annual industrial output, 
when the number of colonies was joined to the 
size of their merchant marines and fleets, and 
the great factor of the control of the seas taken 
into consideration, it seemed scarcely possible 
that the Germans could hope to win the war, 
or that the Allies might muddle through it with 
such lack of success as to lose it. If the Central 
Empires were blockaded, and the Allies had at 
the same time access to the markets of the 
world, would not this difference in resources 
alone decide the issue, when the type of warfare 
made the amount of material available and the 

135 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

strength of the economic fabric a military factor 
of real significance? If, moreover, the pro- 
ductive capacity of the neutral nations were 
added to that of the Allies, would not its mere 
volume be sufficient to overwhelm the Germans? 
How could the Central Empires even imagine 
for a moment that they could win a war against 
the whole world? 

The Allies were soon entirely confident, once 
Great Britain was in, once the Empire had proved 
itself loyal, and the United States had shown 
itself sympathetic and not likely to add its re- 
sources to those of Germany, that the previous 
calculations of the ability of the Triple Entente 
to fight a war against the Triple Alliance would 
prove reliable. Did not the Germans fear them? 
Had they not hesitated in 1907 and in 1911 to 
open the issue of the war? Did not that mean 
that they themselves calculated the resources of 
the Allies as not less formidable than they seemed 
to the Allies themselves? Comfort, too, was de- 
rived from the general German description of the 
cause of the war. The British colossus astride 
all trade routes, able and willing to strangle Ger- 
man commerce, the French octopus, fastened 
upon Africa, sucking out the blood of its colonies 
to the detriment of German trade, created pict- 
ures of power which led very naturally to con- 
clusions of invulnerability and consequent cer- 
tainty of victory. 

The first analysis of the causes of the war also 
led the majority of the people in Allied countries 
to conclude that Germany would easily be beaten. 

136 



THE HEAVY COST OF OPTIMISM 

They could see no reasonable basis whatever for 
the Pan-Germanic movement in Germany itself. 
The German people must have been duped and 
fooled by the military class. Could it be sup- 
posed for a moment that they wished to fight 
and die for the glory of the Hohenzollerns, that 
there could be a real basis in the public opinion 
of Germany for the policy of aggression and the 
structure of militarism? The great majority re- 
fused and still refuse to believe it. A little real 
information, it was felt, would speedily change 
the attitude of the German people. Nor could 
they see any solidarity in the alliance between 
Germany and Austria-Hungary, in the relations 
between Austria and Hungary, between Bul- 
garia and Austria, between Turkey and Bulgaria. 
The coalition was weak; it would fall to pieces of 
its own weight; it lacked the necessary staying 
power to fight a great war. It was a mere con- 
glomerate of people, pieced together by un- 
scrupulous madmen and escaped lunatics, made 
drunk by the gospel of power, and devoid en- 
tirely of moral scruples. Their leadership could 
scarcely be intelligent enough to be dangerous. 
It may be that the time has already come when 
such statements as these sound peculiar and 
wild to people in England and in America, but the 
author well remembers the day when nothing else 
gained credence. 

Time certainly would win for the Allies. To be 
sure, they were not prepared, nor had they fore- 
seen the war, but nothing but time was thought 
necessary to make such potential strength as 

137 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

theirs overwhelming in the field. Day by day 
the Allied army would increase in numbers and 
in efficiency. Day by day the German army 
would necessarily grow weaker. It was felt that 
Germany was depending for victory upon the 
first great aggressive rush, upon the first strength 
of her first army. It was not thought that she 
could continue such an effort, much less increase 
it. Even from responsible quarters came opin- 
ions of this sort. The only German strategy of 
victory, it was explained to the people, de- 
pended upon the success of the dash on Paris, 
the annihilation of the French before the Rus- 
sian army could be put into the field. Once the 
dash on Paris was stopped, once the Russians 
had moved, the defeat of the Germans was cer- 
tain, for they had made no less grievous a blunder 
than to leave the resistance of the French out of 
the calculation and to forget that Great Britain 
might join the war. Hence, when the battle of 
the Marne was over, the triumphant proclama- 
tion went forth that the war was won, that Ger- 
man hopes were destroyed, that the Germans 
themselves knew it, that nothing now was left 
to be done but to estimate the extent of the vic- 
tory the Allies wished to win and to wait for time 
to make it conclusive and final. 

Among the optimists were those who insisted 
that there was not enough money in the world 
to fight such a war for three months. Their num- 
ber was legion and unfortunately there seemed to 
be many in London and Paris who believed it. 
Even Mr. Lloyd George himself declared in the 

138 



THE HEAVY COST OF OPTIMISM 

House of Commons that the war would be de- 
cided by the possession of the last pound of 
money. The economists also pointed out that 
Germany was a debtor state, owing vast sums 
of money to France and England, that she must 
necessarily go bankrupt in six months and would 
thereafter be unable to finance the war. If she 
should try such a perilous experiment, she would 
be unable to tax the people such sums as were 
needed, and none of them could figure a method 
by which she might float loans. All beliefs 
united upon the amazing strength of the Allies, 
the astounding weakness of Germany, the cer- 
tainty of victory, and the shortness of the war. 
So much indeed was said about economic ex- 
haustion, about the pounds doing the work, about 
the lack of raw materials in Germany, that the 
public came almost to believe that a military vic- 
tory was not imperative, or at the very least 
would not be the essential element in the winning 
of the war. Victory was only a question of time 
and there were several ways in which it might 
be attained, nearly all of which were much more 
decisive and far cheaper than a military victory. 
Still, the army must stop the Germans and hold 
them while the navy and the factories were win- 
ning. There was in many minds a certainty that 
the economic cost of fighting the war would 
destroy the German economic fabric for at least 
a generation. When the war was over, they 
confidently assured themselves, Germany would 
no longer be an economic or military rival of 
Great Britain or France. She had dug her own 

10 139 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

grave and would now proceed to fall into it. 
Hence most men felt entirely easy about the 
length of the war; the longer it was the more 
surely it would destroy the enemy. Some were 
even inclined to think that it ought not to be won 
too soon. It would be better to visit a little 
economic retribution on Germany before she was 
allowed to taste the blessings of peace. 

It was widely anticipated that the Socialists in 
Germany would stop the war by a general strike 
in the factories such as they had themselves pro- 
claimed they would undertake should a war 
break out. For some years, too, it had been 
whispered (and in some quarters shouted) that 
the socialistic and trade-union movements in all 
European countries had come to a formal agree- 
ment that no war should in future be permitted, 
and that, if one should break out, they would 
all prevent its prosecution by a general strike. 
From the general belief that the German people 
had been hoodwinked and fooled the Allied na- 
tions came to the conclusion that the democratic 
and liberal element in Germany would soon dis- 
cover the deception and precipitate a revolution 
which would depose the Kaiser, the General Staff, 
and the High Command, and inaugurate the rule 
of the people by a democratic peace and a demo- 
cratic constitution for the Empire itself. Such a 
belief, indeed, still persists in many quarters and 
is perhaps the most familiar formula for the end- 
ing of the war. The true significance of this 
optimism was that it led the Allied public to rely 
upon other than military factors for victory. 

140 



THE HEAVY COST OF OPTIMISM 

Indeed, the war was not ten weeks old before an 
almost invincible optimism took possession of the 
British, French, and American people. No one 
could conceive that the Allies might lose the war 
or that the Germans might by any possibility 
win it. That optimism continued undiminished 
until the Italian defeat and the invasion of the 
plains of Italy by the German and Austrian 
armies in the autumn of 1917. There lay behind 
this optimism something far more than assump- 
tion — elation. There was the completeness of 
the moral victory over Germany. High moral 
resolve commonly does lead to optimism, to the 
belief that God fights for the right, and that in the 
end right will win. Then came the astounding 
completeness of the victory of the British fleet 
on the sea, the rapidity with which German 
cruisers were captured and German merchant 
ships driven into neutral harbors. Almost imme- 
diately the transportation of the world was in 
British hands and the Germans completely cut 
off from the outside world. Then the blockade, 
instituted promptly by the British fleet in the 
North Sea, the promptitude and accuracy of 
whose movements cannot but compel the utmost 
admiration, awakened once more the memories 
of the Armada, of Blake, of Nelson, of the old 
days of British superiority and the decision of 
wars by the sea power. British as well as Ger- 
mans had read the great book of Admiral Mahan 
and had by no means forgotten his conclusion 
that the majority of the wars in history had in 
one way or another been decided by sea power. 

141 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

All the facts and figures cited to prove these 
achievements were beyond doubt true and it was 
more than natural that people should conclude 
them more potent than in the end they turned 
out to be. 

Optimism led the Allied peoples to believe that 
because the war was not being lost it was being 
won; that because the Germans were not winning 
victories in France they were therefore being 
beaten. The almost exclusive preoccupation 
with the war on the West Front resulted from the 
fact that the French and British themselves were 
fighting on no other front. The inevitable per- 
sonal ties between the armies and the people 
concentrated attention on their own armies. 
Then came soon the feeling that if the Germans 
were not making progress in France they were 
losing the war, that if the Allies were holding the 
Germans in France they were winning the war, 
because time fought against the Germans. With 
vast confidence the British assured one another 
that somehow or other muddling through would 
prevail. Often in the past they had been in 
worse plights than in this war and they had 
somehow or other always muddled through. 

But the difficulties primarily serious, which this 
optimism brought in its train, were not those due 
to the extemporization of the war. They were 
those which caused regrettable and costly delays 
in preparation for the war, extemporization 
rather than calculation, reliance on past tradi- 
tion rather than on present analysis. This cheery 
optimism also tended to make the general public 

142 



THE HEAVY COST OF OPTIMISM 

in Great Britain feel easy, work less, worry less, 
and hence fail to supply that energy and concen- 
tration of effort which was imperative at that 
particular moment, if the war was to be won in 
anything less than a great number of years. In- 
valuable time was wasted in the attempt to 
create an army by voluntary enlistment. Vast 
difficulties were encountered in the handling of 
criminals and slackers by the failure to pass the 
conscription bill more promptly. Conservation 
of food was not attempted until serious troubles 
were already in sight. Agriculture was not 
stimulated and the maximum of production for 
the war itself was far from attained. Shrapnel 
was manufactured long after it should have been 
abandoned for high explosives. The workmen 
on government jobs declined at first to work full 
daily shifts, to say nothing of overtime and Sun- 
days. All of this delay inevitably threw a greater 
burden upon the devoted French army and caused 
it to bear the total burden of the German inva- 
sion of France much longer than was expedient. 
But, however inevitable this optimism may 
have been, however desirable in those first months 
when it seemed to many as if the heavens had 
fallen and the pit of hell yawned beneath, it was 
a thousand times regrettable that men should 
have forgotten that the German High Command 
had been studying these very figures of economic 
preponderance for decades in order that they 
might devise dispositions and ratios of troops 
which should rob them utterly of conclusive 
effect when the war should break out. The 

143 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

Allies relied for victory upon the potency of 
the very factors to obviate which the Germans 
had spent years of preparation. This disparity 
of numbers and of economic resources the Ger- 
mans concluded long ago was the great obstacle 
they had to meet. To deal with it, they spent 
not less than three decades in the creation of a 
military and administrative machine which 
should bear that exact ratio to the probable allied 
forces, which could be created within any rea- 
sonable time, needed to make victory for the 
Germans a scientific fact. 

To provide the High Command with the 
necessary data for this scientific ratio, the In- 
visible Army of German spies in foreign coun- 
tries had been created and maintained. No 
extemporized system prepared after the assault 
should be able to resist the German dispositions; 
at the very least these calculations should neu- 
tralize this disparity in numbers and in eco- 
nomic resources and allow the two alliances to 
fight on an equality. A card catalogue was 
created in Berlin of every officer in the British, 
French, and Russian armies, with his relatives, 
his money, his weaknesses, his crimes, and his 
virtues. Indeed, it was commonly said before 
the war that the French and British armies 
were better known in Berlin than in London and 
Paris. There were, too, exact statements of 
the number of men of probable military fitness 
who could be drafted, of the number of men well 
enough educated to make officers, of the number 
of artillery officers and the number of men of 

144 



THE HEAVY COST OF OPTIMISM 

scientific education who could be quickly trained 
for artillery work. The possible output of every 
munition-factory in England, France, Russia, 
and the United States was calculated, working 
on one, two, or three shifts. The number of 
factories which were possible of transformation 
into munition-factories had also been elaborately 
calculated. Then the probable number of skilled 
workmen who could be at once turned to muni- 
tion work had been computed; the number who 
could be quickly trained; the amount of raw 
material needed; and the carrying capacity of 
the British marine with relation to the transpor- 
tation of forces to Europe, to the food-supplies 
of the British Empire, and to its ordinary 
trade. Nothing was forgotten; every thing- 
was scientifically determined by the Invisible 
Army so far as time, money, and brains could 
do it. 

What then, asked the Germans, should be 
the ratio of a German army of known strength, 
with a known war reserve of officers, with a 
known artillery, with a certain definitely as- 
sumed mobility, with certain strategic positions 
to utilize to the Russian and French armies — 
of such and such definite strength, of such re- 
serve, with such and such material to be called 
up and quickly trained? There was no guess- 
work. The net result was the preparation of 
the first plans for Allied victory upon the basis 
of economic and potential factors which the 
Germans believed themselves to have already 
neutralized by preparations made before the war 

145 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

was begun, upon the very same factors upon 
which the German strategy of victory itself was 
based. There can be little doubt that we have 
here one essential explanation of the inconclusive 
character of the first two years of the war. How 
could it have been otherwise? Even assuming 
that the German calculations prove in the end 
to have been wrong, it was scarcely to be sup- 
posed that their inadequacy would so soon have 
been manifested. 

The optimistic belief in the infallibility of 
their own calculations led the Allies to other 
conclusions of great significance. They decided 
that a maximum victory was possible at a mini- 
mum price; that victory would perhaps not 
need to be won in the field, but could be had at 
the price of the economic exhaustion of Germany 
as the result of the blockade by the sea power, 
or as the result of a revolution brought about 
by the awakening of the German people them- 
selves. The original military campaign was 
therefore planned to achieve political and diplo- 
matic objectives which were desirable rather 
than essential, which assumed that the winning 
of victory was not a thing with which the army 
need primarily concern itself. It should be the 
task of the military forces to take possession of 
those strategic locations which the Allies had 
already determined at the very outset must be 
in their hands at the end of the war. Their pos- 
session was obviously essential from a diplo- 
matic and political point of view. 

At the same time they were not objectives 

146 



THE HEAVY COST OF OPTIMISM 

which the army found it easy to achieve because 
they involved at once military operations soon 
seen to be costly of both men and material. In 
particular they involved a direct frontal attack 
upon the German trench lines. Once more the 
Allies directed their first assaults upon a series of 
positions chosen by the German General Staff 
only after the most elaborate investigations and 
reports by army officers and by the Secret Ser- 
vice, worked out with relation both to a defensive 
and offensive war by the Staff in Berlin in many 
long and tiresome sessions. The Germans fell 
back after the battle of the Marne, as all ob- 
servers were agreed, to a series of positions which 
they had prepared in advance. The Allies, 
buoyed up with the optimism of almost certain 
victory, proceeded then to deliver a frontal as- 
sault upon these prepared positions. The re- 
sult was to impose upon the Allied army military 
tasks of the utmost difficulty and not primarily 
related at this time to the strategy of victory. 

It is easy for us to sit here after the event and 
criticize and carp; to point out that this should 
have been otherwise and that should not have 
been done. It is of course idle to suppose that 
the Allies possessed any other factors to use in 
preparation for the war than those which the 
Germans had so carefully calculated and cata- 
logued, or that the war could have been fought in 
France at all without an assault upon the posi- 
tions which the Germans themselves had pre- 
pared. There was not the original difficulty. 
The difficulty lay in the optimism which con- 

147 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

cealed from the Allies the foresight of the Ger- 
mans, made in view of precisely the preparations 
which the Allies themselves proceeded to under- 
take, to deal with the only type of assault which 
the Allies would be able to deliver. No doubt 
this optimism was more common among the 
people and among the military class than among 
officials, but it certainly should not have been 
allowed to gain so complete an ascendancy over 
the public mind. 



XII 

THE PRICE OF GERMAN ISOLATION 

THE diplomatic successes of the Allies have 
been brilliant and conclusive. The whole 
world stands in serried array against the Central 
Empires. The moral victory, fought and won 
in the first months of the war on the issue of 
Belgium and of the atrocities, was not more 
sweeping than conclusive. Indeed, the intimate 
connection of the two is obvious and success was 
the almost inevitable result. A moral and diplo- 
matic isolation of the Central Empires was thus 
created as complete as in any similar case 
in history. The achievement was surpassingly 
great, but a price was necessarily paid, and only 
the outcome of the war can show whether or not 
it was too high. 

Probably history does not record an alliance 
between nations more varied, more dissimilar, 
more scattered. Great Britain, France, Italy, 
and the United States find themselves the allies 
of Greece, Portugal, Siam, Arabia, Japan, China, 
Rumania, Serbia, the South American nations, 
and Cuba. Nor has any war presented a greater 
extent and variety of diplomatic ends to be 

149 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

achieved by the united efforts of the coalition. 
Mr. H. H. Asquith, ex-Premier of England, under 
whose regime the greater part of this diplomacy 
was achieved, has again and again made authori- 
tative statements of its purposes, and the follow- 
ing sentences from an authorized interview in 
November, 1917', are important and clear: "We 
should be stultifying all our professions, and 
throwing away the incalculable sacrifices which 
we have made, if we were to submit to a so-called 
peace which left France still despoiled and Italy 
as a nation still truncated and incomplete; which 
did not curtail the Turk's powers and oppor- 
tunities of misgovernment; which did not pro- 
vide for an emancipated and restored Belgium; 
for an enlarged and autonomous Serbia; for the 
creation in Poland, the prey in the past of dy- 
nastic and military ambitions, of a united and 
self-governing state. The security of France; 
the placing upon an unassailable foundation of 
the rights of the smaller nationalities; the de- 
struction, not of Germany or the German people, 
but of the military domination of Prussia, which 
is their curse as it has become the curse of 
Europe and the world — these were and still are 
the purposes for which we have spent and are 
spending freely and without stint the best blood 
of the Allied peoples. They are none of them 
selfish objects. There is not the slightest taint 
of an aggressive or even a vindictive purpose in 
any one of them. . . . They do not profess to 
exhaust the indispensable material safeguards 
against the recurrence of the dangers which have 

150 




THE BALKANS IN 1914 



THE PRICE OF GERMAN ISOLATION 

come so near to drowning the civilized world. 
They can be pursued with clean hands and a 
clear conscience by the democracies of the 
world." 

The most striking characteristic of these aims 
was their lack of essential unity; the only com- 
mon denominator lay in the fact that they were 
all to be attained by the defeat of Germany. 
Not one of them possessed the same value to all 
of the Allies which would induce them all to 
make the same degree of sacrifice to attain it. 
Nor were they consistent with one another. We 
must certainly remember that even the official 
interpretations in the various smaller nationali- 
ties, based upon such statements as this of Mr. 
Asquith, were not necessarily those understood 
and accepted in Paris and London. Yet was it 
not a matter of real significance that two or more 
countries were apparently promised fulfilment of 
mutually antagonistic ambitions? Thus Italy, 
Greece, Albania, and Serbia all expect territory 
at the close of the war, and whatever each re- 
ceives it must necessarily obtain at the others' 
expense. Greece and Serbia claim the same sec- 
tion of Macedonia; both claim Albania. Italy 
also desires the diplomatic and economic domina- 
tion of the entire western Balkans, including 
Albania and the harbors of the Adriatic. Both 
Serbia and Albania wish to gain these same har- 
bors. Then, too, Russia scarcely found agree- 
able the promise of an autonomous Poland, 
created at Russian expense and erected between 
her and Germany, a buffer state which deprived 

151 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

her of the control of her own proper military 
frontiers against German aggression. Nor is it 
probable that Rumania and Greece saw the 
promises to Russia of the possession of Con- 
stantinople with equanimity and pleasure. Still 
less would Italy see the arrival of a new naval 
power in the Mediterranean with satisfaction. 

As originally aligned, the members of the 
Triple Entente cherished ambitions, to be won 
at one another's expense, almost as serious and 
as antagonistic as those which they all possessed 
against the Central Empires. England and 
France have long been rivals in northern Africa; 
Russia and Great Britain have long been strug- 
gling for the control of Denmark and Scandi- 
navia, while the objections of Great Britain to the 
possession of Constantinople by Russia have 
been a commonplace of history. Nor is it to be 
forgotten that not so very many years ago the 
Russians made a determined attempt to get 
control of the approaches to India and more than 
once clashed with Great Britain in the Far East. 
There, too, the claims of Japan, of Great Britain, 
and of Russia were by no means harmonious and 
consistent even if all were prepared to make cer- 
tain concessions for the sake of harmony and 
mutual assistance against Germany. The con- 
cession which one made to the other was scarcely 
as agreeable to the third. 

From all of these considerations it necessarily 
followed that campaigns were fought for objec- 
tives not of the same value to all the Allies. 
How could the Italians, the Greeks, and the 

152 



THE PRICE OF GERMAN ISOLATION 

Serbians attach the same value to the indepen- 
dence of Belgium as Great Britain and France? 
How could Alsace-Lorraine possess the identical 
interest for the British that it has for the French? 
Nor could they, on the other hand, be expected 
to shed their blood to conquer the Trentino and 
Trieste with that same patriotic devotion which 
the Italians were sure to display. It could not 
be to the interest of all the members of the alli- 
ance to prolong the war until everything was won, 
nor to attempt certain objectives most difficult 
of attainment by armies. It was not to be ex- 
pected that the Italians would be willing to fight 
as long to free Alsace-Lorraine as the French, nor 
that the French and the British would be anxious 
to prolong the war in order to achieve what they 
consider almost insuperably difficult aims in the 
Balkans. 

In many cases Great Britain, France, and Rus- 
sia, the major members of the Entente, under- 
took an objective difficult in the extreme, with- 
out being assured at the same time that the 
military assistance which the new ally could 
exert would add as much to the resources as 
the new objective did to their burdens. Still 
less did they insure effective assistance in the 
main theater of war. Indeed, it must be re- 
membered that only one of these very numerous 
alliances and agreements, made by the Allies 
with so many of Germany's enemies, included a 
definite understanding that military assistance 
of any importance should be accorded them in 
France. That is the understanding with the 

153 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

United States. No doubt the adhesion of Italy 
was important. The Italian army would occupy 
on the south a considerable number of Austrian 
troops and would therefore reduce the odds 
against the Allies in France; the Government 
would certainly stop the flow of raw material 
through Italy into Germany. Both were sig- 
nificant, but only indirectly important to the 
prosecution of the war on the West Front and 
scarcely likely to be the decisive element in 
victory. 

Yet Italy was determined to occupy during 
the war either the Trentino, or Trieste, or both, 
both of them major military operations, be- 
lieved to be beyond the unaided power of the 
Italian army and requiring for their achievement, 
therefore, effective assistance from the Allies. 
For this reason the Allies preferred to postpone 
these conquests until greater progress had been 
made in France. The adhesion of Italy made 
heavy demands upon them for food, coal, iron, 
munitions, artillery, all of which required ex- 
tensive railroad and shipping arrangements 
which they could at that time ill afford to pro- 
vide. The hope that in time the Italian army 
might become capable of more than compen- 
sating for the amount of assistance required was, 
of course, likely to be fulfilled. Then the justice 
of the Italian case against the Austrians; the 
entire anxiety to aid them; the old traditional 
sympathy between France, England, and Italy; 
the desire to rupture once and for all the old 
Triple Alliance, made the Allies labor for the 

154 



THE PRICE OF GERMAN ISOLATION 

adhesion of Italy and receive it with a peculiar 
satisfaction and joy. But the gain was diplo- 
matic and political, moral rather than military, 
a future rather than an immediate asset. It is 
no disparagement to the gallant Italians to say 
that for the moment the gain in military strength 
was not equal to the added military and economic 
burden. 

So, too, in the case of Greece. Under the king 
that unfortunate kingdom controlled the rear 
of any army operating on Serbia and Austria 
from Saloniki, a campaign believed by many 
military men to be the necessary and conclusive 
blow<against the Central Empires. It was not to 
be thought of while Greece was pro-German, nor 
did the Allies wish to treat Greece as another 
Belgium and literally coerce her. Still less was 
it necessary. Venezelos had been strong in 
Greece for many years; his followers seemed to 
comprise the vast majority of those Greeks who 
had not been purchased with German money. 
To secure the adhesion of Greece without the 
application of military force took time, and, when 
the way was clear for the military attack from 
Saloniki, it was too late to undertake it. The 
Germans had already anticipated it by the occu- 
pation of Serbia and of Macedonia and had so 
strengthened the Bulgarian and Turkish armies 
that a simultaneous campaign in France and 
in the Balkans was not to be thought of. The 
alliance with the Greeks, therefore, improved 
the strategic position of the Allies on the south, 
but brought them no military assistance of im- 

ii 155 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

portance. At the same time it raised hopes in 
Greece of accessions of new territory, which it 
may be difficult to achieve without exhausting 
campaigns, and which will certainly not co- 
incide with Serbian and Italian notions of the 
reconstruction of the Balkans. The economic 
burden assumed by the alliance with Greece 
was by no means unimportant. Food, coal, 
munitions, money were also needed. It was in 
this case an uneven exchange for an amount of 
military aid which certainly could not be during 
the conduct of the war of much importance. 

The championship of the case of the small and 
of the suppressed nationalities necessarily included 
not only Serbia and Belgium, but also the cases of 
Bohemia, 1 of Poland, of the southern Slavs in 
Austria, 1 of the Rumanians in Hungary. What- 
ever the justice of their case — and so far as 
democratic premises go that seems clear — the 
attainment of autonomy by most of those people 
would involve the overthrow of the constitu- 
tional arrangement in Austria-Hungary and 
would to the thinking of Austro-Hungarians de- 
stroy the monarchy. They will scarcely, there- 
fore, accept such terms except after a defeat 
much more sweeping and considerable than would 
be essential to satisfy the just claims of France, 
Great Britain, and Russia. Once more the price 
paid by diplomacy in expected military achieve- 
ment was not necessarily too high, but was 

1 These have thus far received no official promises, but they are 
none the less expectant of aid and claim many unofficial assur- 
ances of support. 

156 



THE PRICE OF GERMAN ISOLATION 

indubitably great and added considerably to 
the burden of the war and to the extent of the 
victory. 

For the assistance of Japan a price was de- 
manded, no doubt, and it seems already to have 
been paid in the domination of China by Japan, 
under whatever diplomatic subtlety the fact may 
be for the time being concealed. Russia not 
improbably also sacrificed claims in Mongolia 
and Manchuria, while public announcement was 
made of the delivery of the Pacific into Japanese 
hands by Great Britain almost at the outbreak 
of the war. In this case the Allies purchased 
valuable economic assistance and naval aid 
against the German raiders at the price of an 
increase of physical power in the Pacific which 
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India 
regard with disquietude. They have all, with 
or without reason, feared Japan, perhaps not 
less than France feared Germany. Japanese 
assistance on the sea during the war meant 
certainly the physical control of the Pacific by 
the Japanese navy and its predominance in that 
ocean. In case of the defeat of the Allies Japan 
would not need to fight for control; she would 
already possess it. In the case of an Allied vic- 
tory Japan would still be more powerful in the 
Pacific than before, unless the German navy 
should be destroyed and it should become pos- 
sible for the British navy to operate once more 
in Pacific waters in force. 

The heterogeneous character of the coalition 
and the great variety and inconsistency of its 

157 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

aims and ambitions were assigned by some as the 
reason for the persistent refusal of the Allies to 
announce definite peace terms, upon the grant- 
ing of which by Germany they were willing to 
end the war. They could not well announce 
the maximum terms which all of them hoped 
to achieve, the arguments ran, because all mem- 
bers of the coalition were not agreed upon the 
expediency of all of those demands. For Italy, 
Greece, Serbia to learn definitely in advance 
what had been promised to the others might 
create diplomatic and military difficulties greater 
now than their original adhesion to the war 
solved. It might also not be possible to achieve 
all of those objectives and it was, therefore, 
scarcely wise to pledge them in advance, to say 
nothing of the possible moral effect upon the 
German people of such a list of territorial 
changes as the great majority of the Allies 
hoped the ending of the war might involve. It 
would give the German propagandists an oppor- 
tunity to insist that the war was undertaken 
for aggression, for the destruction of Germany 
and Austria, a statement certainly untrue as 
the war was understood in London, in Paris, 
and in Washington. On the other hand, it was 
difficult, if not impossible, to announce a set 
of minimum terms, because no member of the 
coalition was willing that any of its designs 
and ambitions should be omitted from such a 
list, and, necessarily, any list of terms less than 
the maximum meant the omission of some one 
of those cherished by some member of this un- 

158 



THE PRICE OF GERMAN ISOLATION 

wieldy coalition. Already Great Britain has felt 
it essential to make public oral guarantees to 
France of a continuation of the war until Alsace- 
Lorraine is won. Both France and Great Britain 
delivered a written guarantee to the old Russia 
promising the possession of Constantinople at 
the end of the war. The Italians have also re- 
ceived general and vague, but nevertheless pub- 
lic, promises of the recovery of Italia Irredenta. 
The most formal pledges have been delivered 
by all the Allies regarding the restoration of 
Belgium and of Serbia, promising in both cases 
the addition of a sufficient amount of territory 
to secure them against future aggression. Be- 
yond these statements nothing much has been 
promised, although a very great deal is under- 
stood to be implied. 

It is hard to see how this was blameworthy 
or reprehensible, for certainly all of these claims 
were just, desirable, and, it may be, necessary 
for the future. Yet once again we must remember 
that the military results were serious in the ex- 
treme. Such a list of terms imposed upon the 
armies the very formidable task of winning 
nothing less than a maximum victory. The 
campaigns must cover all possible objectives 
and not merely aim at defeating the German 
army. Interpreted literally, the maximum terms 
of peace meant that the war could not be con- 
sidered won till Germany had been driven from 
all conquered territory — Belgium, France, Alsace- 
Lorraine, the Balkans, Rumania, Poland, the 
Trentino, Trieste, and Serbia. 

159 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

The net result, therefore, of Allied diplomacy 
during the first years of the war was greatly to 
increase the military task before the army, to 
set it at the maximum of extent and of diffi- 
culty. The second and perhaps more immedi- 
ately important result was to prevent unity of 
command in the field. Such was the necessary 
corollary of the lack of singleness of purpose 
among the Allies in the fighting of the war. All 
of them were anxious to defeat Germany for 
reasons which had for no two the same force and 
cogency, by specific campaigns which could for 
no two of them have similarly important objec- 
tives. That the German army should be beaten 
in the easiest way seemed questionable to many 
of them, for fear that such a campaign might 
not at the end of the war leave them in physical 
possession of the objectives most important to 
them, and that their own desires and aims might 
be frustrated, as so many were in the great 
peace conference of 1814. Such was inevitably 
the disadvantage of the outside as opposed to 
the central position. The location of the Cen- 
tral Empires itself naturally created a certain 
relationship between the various campaigns, a 
certain ability of the various armies to support 
one another in different campaigns, the achieve- 
ment of strategic objectives almost equally 
valuable to all members of the coalition. Such 
an essential unity the Allies could never at- 
tain because such an essential geographic and 
strategic unity the positions they held did not 
possess. For this reason, therefore, nearly all 

160 



THE PRICE OF GERMAN ISOLATION 

of the Allies very early reached the conclusion, 
which they still maintain, that victory will not 
be victory unless it possesses certain precon- 
ceived characteristics. 

Does this not in some measure explain the 
apparent unwillingness on the part of the more 
important members of the coalition to renounce 
control of their own armies and accept the dic- 
tation of a generalissimo, appointed necessarily 
from the military staff of some one of them? 
Do they not to some extent fear that the cam- 
paign finally decided upon might not provide 
for their own objectives and might favor those 
of the nation to which the generalissimo belongs? 
Or even that the campaign finally deemed ex- 
pedient for the defeat of Germany might make 
no provision at all for their own particular ob- 
jective, and the war therefore end without the 
territory in their own hands? Beyond all doubt 
the French were not anxious for the war to end 
before Alsace-Lorraine had been won and France 
liberated from the enemy. Equally the British 
were not at all desirous of making peace until 
Belgium had been cleared of Germans. Neither 
had any intention of buying back the territory 
now in enemy hands by the sacrifice of valuable 
colonies in Africa, or by the betrayal of their own 
associates in the Balkans or elsewhere. 

Each wished, therefore, to retain an effective 
veto on any of the general objectives undertaken 
in the war, because both were determined that 
the main attack must continue in France, and 
that the main force of the Allies must therefore 

161 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

not be moved to Saloniki, or to Constantinople, 
or to the plains of the Po. Nor is this statement 
contradictory to the affirmation of Lloyd George 
that the military control of the army had not 
been interfered with by statesmen and civilians. 
No doubt, once the object of the campaign had 
been determined the soldiers fought it in their 
own way. At the same time there can be no 
doubt whatever that the soldiers have not been 
allowed to determine the objectives of the cam- 
paigns either in location or in character. For 
these reasons the new Central War Council, 
created in November, 1917, to give unity of 
aim to the war, still had no power to act or to 
take the initiative. It was to make simpler a 
working agreement between the various Allies, 
who, as before, retained control each of its own 
army, who, if they disagreed with the general 
conclusion reached by the majority of the confer- 
ence, would still be able practically to veto 
the decision by refusing to co-operate. The real 
division of authority remained as before, the 
real dissimilarity of purpose continued, the het- 
erogeneous diplomatic character of the alliance 
still weighed heavily upon the military conduct 
of the war itself and dictated conditions under 
which the armies must fight the campaigns. 

Many will ask why was so much undertaken, 
why were so many nations invited to join in 
the war against Germany at a price which may 
require the prosecution of the war for five or 
ten years more if all is to be achieved? Un- 
doubtedly the answer is to be found in that 

16* 



THE PRICE OF GERMAN ISOLATION 

optimism which spread through the entire world, 
outside of the Central Empires, very early in 
the war, that the victory of the Allies was cer- 
tain, and which until the autumn of 1917 never 
wavered. It was felt that victory was, after 
all, a mere question of time. The sea power, 
the economic exhaustion of Germany, the in- 
ability to import raw materials for munitions, 
the wearing down of Germany's productive 
power, the attrition of the German army, must 
necessarily give the Allies a military predom- 
inance which would be invincible, one so great 
that there was no need to worry about winning 
the war here or there. It was to be won by 
defeating the German army, which might well 
be beaten by such an army of the Allies any- 
where. Expectations were also widely enter- 
tained in responsible circles of a revolt of the 
German people against the war, of a definite 
loss of morale by the German people, of a revolt 
against Austria by Hungary, of a rising of the 
southern slavs. These it was thought would 
make a military victory scarcely essential. 

Still less was it possible to conceive that a 
military victory was a matter of doubt. The 
superiority of the Allies in man power was so 
immense, their resources so incomparably greater, 
their economic productivity so enormous, that, 
in a war where potential man power, produc- 
tivity, and economic resources were felt to be 
almost, if not quite, the fundamental factors 
in the military equation, victory seemed to the 
military men demonstrated by a logic as in- 

163 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

fallible as that of mathematics. It should be 
possible, therefore, to fight the war for the pur- 
pose of accomplishing the expedient as well as 
the imperative objectives in view of the period 
after the war. To sacrifice any of them merely 
in order to end the war a little sooner, to end it 
in a particular place or in a particular way, was 
unnecessary. Time would fight infallibly for the 
Allies, and the longer the war lasted the more 
crushing would be their victory. The armies 
might well devote themselves to the task of 
clearing the ground for the peace conference 
and for the final victory of democracy. Hence 
the campaign in the west had as its objective 
the driving of the Germans from France, Bel- 
gium, and Alsace-Lorraine. The Russians under- 
took to reconquer Poland, to invade Hungary, 
to stimulate the revolt of the Hungarians, of 
the Bohemians, and of the southern Slavs. The 
Rumanians were to invade Hungary and retake 
Transylvania; the Italians were to operate 
against Trieste; an expedition was sent to take 
Constantinople; and other British forces pro- 
ceeded to campaign against Bagdad and Meso- 
potamia in order that the territory crossed by 
the famous railroad should be entirely in their 
own hands at the end of the war. There were 
also Arabia and Persia, highly desirable districts 
to hold and which they had not hitherto suffi- 
ciently well controlled. There were the German 
colonies in Africa and the Pacific. Those, too, 
should be gathered in while the gathering was 
good. 

164 



THE PRICE OF GERMAN ISOLATION 

The inevitable result was a lack of unity in 
the campaigns. The army campaigning against 
Verdun did not directly support nor was it 
directly aided by armies operating on the Yser; 
neither possessed any direct relation to the 
Italian armies operating against Trieste, nor did 
the latter support or aid the Italian army oper- 
ating against the Trentino. The Russians in 
Poland were obviously far from the French, 
British, and Italians, and were themselves of no 
direct aid to the Russians and Rumanians operat- 
ing against Hungary or the Allies gathering under 
Sarrail at Saloniki. The only unity was pro- 
vided by the fact that all were fighting the armies 
of the Central Empires. It was assumed that 
simultaneous pressure anywhere and everywhere 
would weaken and make difficult the German de- 
fensive anywhere and everywhere. They were 
all killing Germans. Was that not enough? Was 
it not probable that an effective attack in France 
would make impossible an effective defense in 
Poland, and that an effective defense by the 
Germans and Austrians against the Italians 
would weaken the forces in the Balkans and make 
easy the work of the Allied army operating from 
Saloniki? Such was the necessary logic of the 
outside position: the armies did not and could 
not support one another. This difficulty of posi- 
tion the Allies neither chose nor created. Of its 
disadvantages they were well aware, but, never- 
theless, the result of Allied diplomacy was rather 
to intensify these disadvantages; to add new 
difficulties for the armies to solve; to put further 

165 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

obstacles in the way of their effective unity and 
co-operation; to prolong the war rather than to 
end it. 

It is always easy for those who sit at a dis- 
tance to point out the simplicity of operations 
whose difficulties they do not entirely understand 
and to expose the insuperable foolishness of 
military and diplomatic measures whose full pur- 
pose they lack the information to comprehend. 
What is done is done, and, as the Frenchman 
said, there is little use in crying about milk which 
has already passed under the bridge. But any 
attempt to analyze the situation of the war in 
February, 1918, in the middle of its fourth year, 
any calculation as to what must be done to win 
it, and as to what had already been done toward 
winning it, should not commence with the idea 
that the work set the armies at the beginning was 
less in amount and in importance than it really 
was. In the size of the task set by diplomacy lay 
one of the chief reasons for the postponement of 
Allied victory. 



XIII 

POLITICS IN WAR-TIME 

IN a war fought by Allied armies, but directed 
by civilian officials, chosen from England and 
France by legislative chambers elected by a wide 
suffrage, politics would necessarily play a part in 
furthering and expediting or in delaying and ob- 
structing the winning of victory. The totality 
of efficiency of the Allied armies in the war would 
depend not upon military or economic factors 
alone, but upon their combination with adminis- 
trative and political factors. In a comparative 
test of strength with the Central Empires, the 
ratio of Allied efficiency would therefore depend 
upon the relative ability of the Allied and Ger- 
man Governments in correlation, prompt action, 
and expedient decision. Nor would inadequate 
political and administrative organization be less 
serious to the conduct of the war than inadequate 
tactics or a failure of the economic organization 
to maintain the army in the field. As an element 
postponing victory, it must by no means be for- 
gotten. As an element in the winning of the war, 
it is by no means to be neglected. Until a real 
solution of the administrative problem has been 

167 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

effected the maximum strength of the Allies can 
scarcely be exerted. For the political officials in 
Allied countries are the brains of the army. 
They have insisted upon their right to decide 
fundamental objectives and significant questions 
and have overruled the suggestions and decisions 
of military and naval officials. The armies, al- 
ready provided by optimism with a task unex- 
pectedly great, loaded in addition by diplomacy 
with the burden of a maximum victory, were to 
be directed (or misdirected) in accordance with 
the traditions and limitations of democratic de- 
centralization and of party politics. 

The handicap to be overcome was in no sense 
political corruption, venal appointments, or the 
ordinary jobbery charged against democratic ad- 
ministration. The difficulty was not that the 
system worked worse in war than ordinarily 
in peace, but that the system itself was planned 
for peace and not for war, that no single adminis- 
trative or political disposition had been made 
with a view to so great and difficult a crisis. The 
efficient conduct of the war depended, like the 
capable performance of any executive task, upon 
the appointment of able and experienced men, 
who understood the exact work at hand; they 
must be allowed wide discretion if they were to 
correlate their efforts and achieve unity of pur- 
pose in essential strategy. 

The German system of centralized adminis- 
tration, of secret diplomacy, of military command 
almost if not quite free from any civilian dic- 
tation, made such appointments simple and 

168 



POLITICS IN WAR-TIME 

already recognized in time of peace as an essen- 
tial element in government the need of correla- 
tion and unity in times of crisis. Provision was 
therefore made for it. The officers of the army 
and navy were appointed by permanent officials 
of state, impervious to social influence, to eco- 
nomic greed, or to personal advantage from the 
appointment, and the extraordinary extent of 
the Imperial authority supposedly vested in the 
Kaiser, and theoretically delegated by him to 
all of the military and naval officials, made pos- 
sible the exercise of wide discretion which would 
necessarily result in the correlation of effort and 
in unity of purpose. Only the officials themselves 
need understand the necessity and desirability 
of those ends. It is no wonder that the political 
system of Germany made the conduct of the 
war easy. It had been created for that end and 
for none other and lacked and still lacks con- 
spicuous qualities deemed by Germans them- 
selves necessary for a satisfactory domestic ad- 
ministration. The political systems of the Allied 
States were, on the contrary, constructed for 
peace and for domestic administration, and made 
either no provision at all for war, or one admit- 
tedly inadequate, one necessarily to be changed 
when the crisis itself appeared. Time was 
needed, therefore, to effect these changes, and 
much of the delay of the conduct of the war in 
England during the first two years was due to 
the attempt to transform the political and ad- 
ministrative system so as more adequately to 
meet the crisis. 

169 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

In England and France the task of finding 
experienced and able men to conduct the war 
fell upon the shoulders of the Ministry, composed 
of men elected because of their personal opin- 
ions upon domestic issues. They had not been 
provided by previous experience with informa- 
tion of the available personnel in the country 
for the important posts to which they were forced 
to make appointments. Well they knew that 
the selection of able and experienced men was 
essential, but how were they to tell who were 
able, who were experienced, whose advice they 
should take? The whole governmental structure 
provided no satisfactory basis of information 
as to the ability and experience even of the 
officers already in the army, to say nothing of 
the many thousands of new officers and new de- 
partmental heads inevitably to be appointed 
from men without any personal experience at 
all. Where so few possessed any a priori quali- 
fications, the choice of able and experienced men 
became practically impossible and all appoint- 
ments necessarily contained much personal bias, 
much assumption, and very little exact knowl- 
edge. It was not to be expected that the Min- 
istries of England and of France would be able 
to make adequate appointments in the first year 
of the war. 

It was thoroughly to be expected that the 
permanent German political, military, and ad- 
ministrative staff, trained for fifty years for 
precisely that exigency, provided by German 
methods with elaborate information regarding 

170 



POLITICS IN WAR-TIME 

nearly every man in the Empire for precisely 
this end, should be able in the first year of the 
war to choose better and should therefore possess 
a handicap of real importance, bound to in- 
crease Germany's ability to resist and to post- 
pone the victory of the Allies. It was nobody's 
fault; it was government by democracy in com- 
parison with autocratic, militaristic government. 
Some errors, however, were exceedingly regret- 
table. All the skilled workmen in France and 
England were allowed to go to the front with 
the first forces, or to enlist, and as a result the 
whole industrial system was completely dis- 
organized. The preparation for the war in some 
cases became impossible until the men had been 
recalled from the army. Then, too, the bravery 
of the British officers in the first months of the 
war led them to expose themselves unduly, 
an opportunity which the Germans were only 
too prompt to appreciate, and which resulted 
in a mortality which imposed very great ob- 
stacles in the way of the efficient training of the 
new army. There seems to be no great doubt 
that one of the serious mistakes made by Great 
Britain early in the war was the manufacture of 
an undue amount of shrapnel and the continu- 
ation of its manufacture long after it had been 
demonstrated less effective than high explosives. 
This, on the other hand, was due to the military 
heads, not to the civilian chiefs. 

The administrative machinery already in ex- 
istence in England and in France, in the War 
Department, the Admiralty, and in the Foreign 

12 171 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

Office, were consumed with petty jealousies and 
traditions, which seem to grow up like weeds in 
such departments in countries committed to 
peace. There was a lack of the habit of co- 
operation, a lack of readiness to correlate vari- 
ous services, which only too often reached a 
definite refusal to co-operate at all. If this was 
done thus at the War Office, it would not be 
done thus at the Admiralty. If the Admiralty 
wanted this, the War Office would find good 
reason to question it. There was in this nothing 
surprising, but much that was regrettable. It 
became necessary to clean the administrative 
house and to devise new machinery before true 
progress could be made. 

It was almost instantly clear that the co- 
operation of the entire industrial fabric of both 
countries, of the entire transportation system, of 
the railroads and the merchant marines, of the 
agricultural resources, of the mines, would be 
absolutely essential to the winning of the war. 
Yet it was to be brought about by a governmental 
machinery entirely unaccustomed to such tasks, 
not provided with the necessary legal authority, 
and hampered by the strong British tradition of 
decentralization, of individual initiative, of the 
right of free competition. Few things had been 
considered in England better established than the 
inalienable right of the individual to conduct his 
business in any fashion he saw fit, to labor or not 
as he liked, for as long a time as he chose, to 
make in his business as much profit as he could, 
to demand and receive such wages as he could 

172 



POLITICS IN WAR-TIME 

get; to loaf if he liked, to strike if he liked, to 
discontinue manufacture at all if he preferred. 
It soon developed that in war-time none of these 
"rights" could be tolerated. To prevent their 
exercise, however, from obstructing the prosecu- 
tion of the war was at once seen to be an adminis- 
trative and political task of the first magnitude, 
to be achieved by the existing democratic ma- 
chinery only with great difficulty. 

With all this unaccustomed work to be done, 
with a decided need for haste and an imperative 
need for efficiency, the political machinery found 
itself not only without the legal authority, not 
only without the administrative tradition of co- 
operation, but handicapped by the political dic- 
tum that the first virtue of democratic govern- 
ment was publicity, that the first duty of a dem- 
ocratic Ministry was to keep the public fully 
informed of its plans. In France and England 
the executive held office at the pleasure of the 
Chamber of Deputies or House of Commons and 
was by custom compelled to resign after a hostile 
vote. No money could be spent unless approved 
nor could it be voted unless the reasons for spend- 
ing it were detailed. No policy could be adopted 
which could not be satisfactorily explained to the 
body to which the Ministry was responsible. 

Secrecy became a political crime and the 
traditional demand for publicity resulted natu- 
rally in the complete opportunity for enemy spies 
to acquire advance information of nearly every- 
thing of importance about to transpire. To inter- 
fere with the operations of the German Invisible 

173 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

Army was insuperably difficult. The traditional 
regard for personal liberty in England and in 
France, the freedom of the individual from sur- 
veillance of any kind by the police or by the au- 
thorities, the "rule of law" in England that no 
man could be held legally responsible for intent 
to commit a crime and certainly could not be in- 
terfered with by the police until he did commit it, 
hampered greatly the attempts of the British 
Secret Service to detect and arrest spies. All 
this made incredibly difficult the creation of any 
army at all, of anything resembling adequate 
maintenance, and increased the probability enor- 
mously that Germany would be able to meet the 
Allied efforts with adequate strength, because 
that foreknowledge essential to the German 
method of warfare was not difficult to acquire. 
From the speeches which the leaders themselves 
were compelled to deliver on public occasions 
and in the legislative houses much valuable in- 
formation was necessarily given. But the war 
could not otherwise be conducted. No one was 
better aware of the difficulty than the British 
and French Ministries, but what could be done? 
All around them rose frantic cries that democ- 
racy must not itself be lost in a war fought for its 
preservation, that the conduct of the war must 
not destroy those very liberties which victory 
was intended to perpetuate. The most obvious 
problems created by this jealousy for the safety 
of democracy need not be enumerated, but some 
of the subtler issues are significant. Both in 
France and in England very great and natural 

174 



POLITICS IN WAR-TIME 

fears took possession of the parliamentary 
parties lest party ascendency and organization 
be lost in the course of the war. Victory would 
not be victory, they thought, unless won by the 
right men. No great experience was required to 
tell them that the winning of the war would en- 
throne the successful party for a generation in its 
control of the parliamentary regime. Each de- 
termined to be that party. Those who were in 
were agreed at all costs to stay in; those who were 
out decided at all costs to get in. In particular 
the Radicals and Liberals, already in control in 
both countries, regarded the accession to power 
of the Conservatives as a calamity scarcely less 
serious than the losing of the war. 

They realized that at the end of the war the 
reconstruction of Europe would begin with the 
rebuilding of each country. Was it to be toler- 
ated that the war should be won for democracy 
and the reconstruction of England and France 
then be undertaken by Conservatives as bad as 
the Tories of the Reform Period, or by the Cleri- 
cals and Royalists? The war must not only be 
won, but it must so be won that, at the end of it, 
right opinion in each country would be in con- 
trol and the social and economic reconstruction, 
upon which political parties in both countries 
were more intent than upon any other issues, 
should be prosecuted with "adequate" intelli- 
gence. Both countries, therefore, started to 
fight the war with political parties based upon 
the domestic issues of the past, thoroughly de- 
termined to conduct the war with definite regard 

175 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

for the social and economic war to be instituted 
at its close. 

It is difficult to see how it could have been 
otherwise. The party in power in each country 
had been chosen as a result of strong feeling 
upon economic and agrarian issues. Its atti- 
tude toward the Church in France had bulked 
large; Home Rule in England was even of 
greater consequence and trade unionism scarcely 
secondary. Hence the conduct of the war, 
its diplomacy, the preparations for it, be- 
came the natural subject of party politics, far 
less with the purpose of deciding correctly upon 
the issues at hand than to preserve the political 
authority of certain men who, for personal, 
economic, and social reasons had been put in 
power. Hence came in England hesitation over 
the reduction of the amount of liquor produced, 
over adequate censorship, over the mobilization 
of labor. A strong wave of adverse opinion in 
the country would be certainly reflected in the 
House of Commons and might cause the down- 
fall of the Ministry, a result to be avoided at 
all costs because they believed the war likely to 
be short and the probability, therefore, that they 
might return to power small. 

In France, not only did similar issues make the 
conduct of the war almost insuperably difficult, 
but the parliamentary practice of interpellation 
had long been established and made the very 
existence of the Ministry precarious and any 
continuity of policy practically impossible. 
Where in England the Ministry had been ac- 

176 



POLITICS IN WAR-TIME 

customed to resign only after a defeat upon a 
question of real moment, the practice in France 
had been to interpellate it upon any question, 
however insignificant or unimportant, and, if an 
adverse vote could then be procured — a matter 
not commonly difficult, for administrative ques- 
tions of great detail were ordinarily involved — 
the Ministry was compelled to resign. Inasmuch 
as the conduct of so great a war, involving so 
many administrative issues of difficulty, made it 
improbable that no mistakes would be com- 
mitted, the life of Ministries in France has been 
short and the continuation of able men in power 
problematical. In both countries, Ministries 
have felt the public impatient for results, anx- 
ious for victory, insistent upon some sort of 
hope that the war was being won, and that it 
was being efficiently conducted. The knowledge 
that such a public opinion permitted their po- 
litical opponents to create parliamentary crises 
led to military campaigns conducted for moral 
effect, battles fought to encourage the people, 
to keep the government in power, to secure a 
favorable vote by which some parliamentary 
crisis might be tided over. All this did not par- 
ticularly advance the winning of the war and 
tended naturally to prolong it. 

There have been fears, too, in both countries 
of the increase of executive power. The ex- 
tensive patronage, placed by the war in the hands 
of the executive, could be used by one party to 
the other's detriment, to drive opponents en- 
tirely from power and to create for itself an 

177 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

impregnable political position. Similarly, the 
party exigencies in both countries, the previous 
jealousies, the personal antipathies of the lead- 
ers made difficult a coalition Government com- 
posed of the strongest men. The best that has 
yet been done, either in France or in England, 
has been to form a Ministry including some of 
the strong men of both parties. Issues of do- 
mestic polity constantly obtruded themselves 
into the strategy and conduct of the war as 
led by the Asquith Ministry in the House of 
Commons, and votes upon the war were cast 
on the basis of loyalty to Mr. Asquith or to 
Mr. Lloyd George, upon previous convictions 
about Home Rule or the labor unions. 

Scarcely less difficult to meet was the definite 
determination of the laboring men that victory 
should bring in France and England certain 
political and economic results favorable to them. 
They were therefore suspicious of any method 
of conducting the war which seemed in any de- 
gree to render improbable the securing at its 
close the solution of domestic issues they them- 
selves were eager to procure. The unions pos- 
sessed representatives in Parliament who voted 
solidly as instructed by the union leaders; were 
represented in the War Cabinet by a member 
whose prime duty it was to see that nothing 
was done in the conduct of the war to prejudice 
the case of labor during the war or after its 
close. They very much complicated the prose- 
cution and the winning of the war. For a while 
the unions entirely refused to permit the em- 

178 



POLITICS IN WAR-TIME 

ployment by the Government of non-union labor, 
declined to work overtime, to work on Sunday — 
in other words, prevented the utilization of the 
maximum economic resources of England. After 
women became commonly employed in the fac- 
tories, the men insisted that the old rule of less 
pay should apply and declined to recognize 
equal pay for equal work. They even fought 
for a time strenuously against the admission of 
women in certain types of work. There was 
again the great jealousy of the skilled laborers 
against the training of the unskilled. They were 
afraid that the training of more men would 
decrease their supremacy and destroy their 
domination of the trade. In order to retain 
their monopoly, they proposed to prevent the 
undertaking of more work than they themselves 
could perform. This economic decision they 
registered politically in the House, in the Cabi- 
net, and in the War Council. Only after the 
greatest difficulty, after the passing of guarantees 
regarding the period after the war, whose terms 
have yet to be revealed, was the maximum of 
Great Britain's economic strength exerted. 

On the other hand, the workingmen were ar- 
dently in favor of a heavy excess profits' tax 
upon all manufacturers, favored municipal and 
public ownership of all public utilities and of 
transportation, were anxious for a type of land 
reform likely to change radically agricultural and 
social conditions in England. It was to be ex- 
pected, too — and the expected happened — that 
they would oppose a definite veto to the devising 

179 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

of any adequate machinery to prevent strikes, 
walkouts, or to punish any failure to push ahead 
the great economic program, not because they 
were unwilling to fight the war, but because of 
their fear of untoward consequences after the 
war was over. They had not the slightest inten- 
tion of winning the war, if the price of victory 
was to be the loss of their own objectives in 
British domestic politics and economic reconstruc- 
tion . However natural, excusable, and explainable 
all of this attitude was, it was none the less a for- 
midable handicap to prompt action and effective 
co-operation and certainly prolonged the war. 

Very early a decision became manifest in 
France, in England, and in the United States 
that victory was not to be won by the executive 
at the expense of the legislature. The old tradi- 
tional hostility in these democratic countries to 
executive authority reappeared with all its old 
virulence. The legislature again claimed the 
power and the right of initiative in policy, and 
wished to treat the executive as nothing better 
than its servant. Fears were vehemently ex- 
pressed that the increase of executive authority 
would destroy the position of the legislature in the 
state; that the conduct of the war in the way 
deemed most expedient by the Ministry enabled 
the executive to escape altogether from the super- 
vision of the elective bodies and would therefore 
destroy the constitution. The demand for se- 
crecy was roundly opposed and the utmost pub- 
licity demanded. Delays were devised in all leg- 
islative houses merely to make sure that the 

180 



POLITICS IN WAR-TIME 

house really did approve of what was being done. 
Half -measures were passed to prevent adding to 
the constitutional authority of the executive, and 
throughout the first two years, both in England 
and in France, there was a manifest lack of full 
confidence in the Ministries, apparently due to a 
suspicion that the extent of executive power de- 
manded was based upon ulterior motives in re- 
gard to the relative positions in the state of 
executive and legislature. It was charged that 
the Ministry intended to free itself as far as 
possible from responsibility, political, adminis- 
trative, and financial. This the majority of the 
houses determined to resist to the bitter end. 

The discretionary authority in regard to mili- 
tary policy and objectives, which the military 
chiefs at once insisted was essential, was promptly 
negatived by the political leaders. Victory was 
not to be won at the expense of the freedom of 
the army and navy from political and civil con- 
trol. In England, in France, and the United 
States this was at once made clear. No an- 
tipathy was older in those countries than the 
jealousy between the military and the civil au- 
thorities; no constitutional tradition was better 
established than the necessary control of the 
former by the latter. In conformity with it, the 
Ministries in both countries insisted upon exercis- 
ing the power of appointment, whenever their 
opinion differed from that of the military heads. 
The military objectives they also insisted upon 
choosing in accordance with political and dip- 
lomatic considerations; their right to veto all 

X81 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

plans and movements by the military authorities 
still exists; the right of constant supervision was 
not only insisted upon, but persistently exercised. 
Political observers were appointed to accompany 
the army to see what took place. The war should 
not be conducted in such a manner that at its 
close the army should hold a constitutional posi- 
tion inconsistent in a democratic state. Better 
far to lose the war than to create a militaristic 
state in order to win it. So argued great numbers 
of men in England and France in the first two 
years of the war and so a great many still argue 
in the United States. 

A very considerable minority of the communi- 
ty, if not a majority, was, moreover, anxious in all 
countries that the war should not be conducted 
to the detriment of individual liberty, of freedom 
of speech and of the press. In France the execu- 
tive was able to meet this difficulty far more 
promptly and more adequately than in England, 
but difficulties are still to be met in all countries. 
The legislatures were chary to sacrifice the right 
of trial of all individuals before the ordinary 
courts, declined to confer upon the Government 
discretion regarding political crimes. German 
spies have been tried in the United States in the 
ordinary courts for arson, incendiarism, placing 
of bombs, and have been fined or awarded short 
terms in prison instead of being shot as they 
deserved — all in accordance with the good old 
democratic maxim that it were better that 
ninety-nine should escape than that one inno- 
cent man should be shot. Effective control by 

182 



POLITICS IN WAR-TIME 

the executive and military authorities of civilians 
has also been difficult to obtain, and in the way 
of its adequate exercise almost insuperable dif- 
ficulties are still placed. 

Very great trouble was experienced early in 
the war in securing the necessary degree of co- 
operation between the Allied armies, partly be- 
cause of the differences in diplomatic and na- 
tional purpose already discussed, partly because 
the Allies lacked any sort of central organiza- 
tion responsible for the conduct of the war. They 
lacked any central military council with power 
to act and the right to take the initiative. Polit- 
ical and diplomatic objections to the creation 
of such a board were at the outbreak of the war 
insuperable and are still considered by many of 
the leading statesmen in England, France, and 
the United States to be very great. What is 
needed is a central council with power to act, 
not merely power to suggest; with power to 
create and dictate a campaign to all the Allied 
armies; power then to conduct it, free from all in- 
terference by the political organizations. Mr. 
Lloyd George declared himself against confer- 
ring the initiative and the power to act. The 
most Great Britain was willing to allow was a 
council with power to suggest, and such a council 
was created in the late autumn of 1917, although 
an advisory body had existed before. Co-opera- 
tion between the different parts of the British 
Empire was also at the beginning of the war 
difficult, due to its anomalous and peculiar con- 
stitution or lack of constitution. The creation 

183 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

of the Imperial War Council was an attempt to 
solve this problem, and it has in the main been 
strikingly successful. 

Real delays from these political and adminis- 
trative sources are over in England and in the 
United States. The troubles of the British Em- 
pire are in all probability solved. In France the 
difficulties are still great, but to a large extent 
solutions seem to have been found. At the same 
time, any one who will honestly study the his- 
tory of the war and of the countries engaged in 
it thus far will find it hard to see how any better 
solutions could have been devised, or how any 
prompter release from these shackles could have 
been had. Democracy is self-government and 
demands that the overwhelming majority of the 
people should be convinced of the expediency of 
important action. It takes time to reassure so 
many people. Moreover, if we have real faith in 
democracy as a form of government, if our pro- 
tests against militarism are truly sincere, we must 
adapt democracy to the crisis, not destroy it. 

None the less, the solution of the adminis- 
trative and political difficulties in England was 
sufficiently sweeping. First, the party system 
was practically abrogated for the duration of the 
war. Next, the responsibility of the Cabinet 
to the House of Commons was to all intents 
and purposes abolished. It was then deemed 
imperative that the House should renounce the 
old right to vote money only for specific pur- 
poses, in specific sums, and for reasons already 
explained. Votes were authorized of indefinite 

184 



POLITICS IN WAR-TIME 

sums to be spent at the Ministry's discretion. 
Finally, the Cabinet itself was practically de- 
prived of the control of the war, relegated to 
the conduct of affairs in England, and a War 
Cabinet created with almost dictatorial powers. 
Thus far this solution has worked well. In 
France no solution has as yet been found for 
the instability of the Ministry, no grant of dis- 
cretionary authority of any extent has yet been 
made to them. They are still compelled to re- 
port, to explain, to receive directions, and are 
forced to resign if on any of these counts the 
Chamber votes adversely. 

In the United States the solution was not only 
excellent, but unexpectedly prompt. It was based 
upon the fact that the Constitution grants the 
entire executive power to the President in per- 
son. He is allowed or required to appoint such 
advisers for such purposes and in such ways as 
he sees fit. He himself must act, but he may 
act in any way or on the advice of any men he 
may choose. Promptly President Wilson con- 
structed a new administration of so-called com- 
mittees and boards, composed of exceedingly 
able men, entirely apart from and outside of the 
ordinary administrative departments, and freed 
therefore from all of the old routine and tra- 
ditions. The President was constitutionally free 
to take the advice of these new boards and was 
not required to submit such matters to the de- 
partmental heads. No ministry yet in power, 
either in France or in England, has the confidence 
of either country to the extent that President 

185 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

Wilson possesses that of the American people. 
The force of public opinion behind him, the 
known approbation by the people of his policies 
and their willingness to trust in his discretion 
and in his rectitude, not only enabled him to 
create these new boards, to subject to them the 
older departments, to conquer and dragoon Con- 
gress, always reluctant and suspicious of execu- 
tive authority, but also to secure the recognition 
of the authority of these new boards and com- 
mittees from the country at large. Manufac- 
turers, railroads, steamship lines, willingly ac- 
cepted authority which they were not required 
legally to recognize, and performed services at a 
sacrifice to themselves which they were legally 
empowered to refuse. Constitutional questions 
were involved in the assumption of the direc- 
tion of the railroads and in the order of the Fuel 
Administrator suspending all work east of the 
Mississippi, which in earlier years and under 
other circumstances would have resulted in a 
temporary nullification of the law by a prompt 
appeal to the courts on the constitutionality of 
the authority. As it was, the acquiescence of 
the country was immediate and unanimous. 

There will be no serious delays in the United 
States due to the inadequacy of administrative 
machinery or the influence of politics. 1 The 

x The agitation in Congress in January, 1918, in regard to the 
inefficient conduct of the war seems to have had no satisfactory 
basis. For a time it seemed as if the Republican party meant to 
create a partisan issue in order to hamper the Administration, but 
those who read events thus were either wrong or the leaders 
changed their minds. 

186 



POLITICS IN WAR-TIME 

President has been great enough to appoint the 
ablest men he could find, regardless of previous 
party affiliation and to an extent far greater than 
has yet been proved possible in England or 
France. As Lord Northcliffe informed his coun- 
trymen, the United States had dealt conclusively 
and adequately with problems over which they 
were still bickering and bungling in Great Britain. 
America, supposedly the least efficient of all the 
democratic Governments, proved herself in this 
moment of crisis more capable of rapid and 
adequate transformation than any European 
state. 
13 



XIV 

PROBABILITY OF GERMAN ECONOMIC EXHAUSTION 

NO prediction was more confidently believed, 
none thus far more conclusively disproved, 
than that the non-military weapons of the Allies 
could win the war despite the German effort to 
counterbalance them and without anything more 
than indirect assistance from the Allied army. 
Prominent in the first rank of fallacies stood the 
expectation of the economic exhaustion of Ger- 
many and her allies. They would be unable to 
feed one another; their supply of raw materials 
necessary for the prosecution of the war would 
give out and could not be replaced; adequate pro- 
duction to support the war would not be possible 
without keeping men in the factory who were 
needed in the army. If the economic interde- 
pendence of the world was true, how could a few 
countries be isolated and still survive? If no 
countries any longer expected to be self-sufficing 
in the medieval sense, if the German economic 
fabric was, as the Germans themselves declared, 
utterly dependent for prosperity and existence 
upon easy access to the markets of the world, 
could not that fabric be ruined by foreclosing it 

188 



PROBABILITY OF GERMAN EXHAUSTION 

access to the world's markets? The logic seemed 
good. Perhaps nothing in the whole course of 
the war so surprised many observers in Great 
Britain, France, and America than the failure 
of this logic to be proved true. The fact that so 
many people implicitly believed in it for so 
many years, the fact, indeed, that so many still 
believe in it as a method by which the war may 
be won, makes the discussion of this point ex- 
ceedingly important. Nothing has been more 
potent in postponing Allied victory than the ex- 
pectation that it need not be won in the field. 

The secret of the difficulty most people seem 
to have experienced was due to their assumption 
that economic exhaustion was positive and im- 
plied a very great degree of necessity for things 
hitherto used. They should have remembered 
that it was entirely relative, dependent not upon 
what people had, but on what they could not and 
would not get along without. Needless to say 
there was a very great distinction between a lack 
of certain kinds of food, a bad distribution of 
food, the inability to eat as much food as people 
had been accustomed to have, the necessity of 
eating foods other than they usually had bought, 
of eating food which they ordinarily had re- 
jected, of eating less food than they wished to 
have, and that long line of fine discriminations 
which begins with the eating of less food than 
they might well have and ends with malnutrition 
and actual starvation. Starvation, too, means 
death — not merely discomfort or suffering. Eco- 
nomic exhaustion of a people is not reached when 

189 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

people are literally dying in large numbers, but 
when they surrender because they are dying in 
large numbers. The surrender of Germany was 
what the people of the Allied countries desired 
and expected, and, unless the economic shortage 
reached the point which made the Germans pre- 
fer surrender to the continued discomfort, it 
could not avail to decide the issue of the war. 

Apparently there were not many who seriously 
thought that anything more than a very great 
shortage of food, much inconvenience, some dis- 
comfort for many, suffering for a few, death for 
the old and infirm, could have been brought about 
in Germany. This seems to be the maximum 
possible suffering anticipated by the Allies. Did 
it not, therefore, rest upon the assumption that, 
long before the economic exhaustion caused death 
for many people or even discomfort, the popula- 
tion would revolt against the war, overturn the 
Government, and make peace on any terms which 
would give them bread? But suppose the Ger- 
mans did what the people of Paris did in 1870, 
what people in countless sieges had done before — 
suffer! No amount of suffering or death which 
they were willing to endure would end the war 
in favor of the Allies ! Indeed, the essential ele- 
ment in the equation was really not the scarcity 
of food in Germany, however great that might be, 
but the strength of German belief in the Tightness 
of the war and the readiness of Germans to suf- 
fer for it. If they honestly believed the war to 
be defensive, that the liberty of the Fatherland 
from foreign domination was at stake, that the 

190 



PROBABILITY OF GERMAN EXHAUSTION 

Kaiser was a true patriot and Hindenburg an 
inspired leader, would they not be ready to ex- 
perience a very great degree of privation rather 
than surrender? And if they did not surrender, 
of what avail to the Allies would be the distress? 
Indeed, the existence of suffering was not the 
important thing; it was the effect of it upon the 
German people. 

The argument about ending the war by 
economic exhaustion really depended, therefore, 
not upon economic, but upon moral factors: 
upon the belief that the German people were not 
honestly behind the war, that they had been 
hoodwinked into supporting it, dragooned and 
thrust into the trenches, driven to death like 
dumb cattle by their military leaders. From 
this compliance with unjust demands, the suf- 
fering would rouse them, waken them in very 
truth, and cause them to demand the end of the 
war. Hence this extraordinary interest in Al- 
lied countries in those who spoke for peace in 
Germany on whatever terms or for whatever 
purpose. They saw in it the beginning of the 
end, the rising of the German people against 
intolerable conditions, the progress of economic 
exhaustion. The argument, therefore, was not a 
mathematical calculation about supplies of food 
and the adequacy of the blockade, but the 
method by which certain moral facts could be 
brought home to the German people, or rather 
the method by which the German people could 
be made conscious of the moral beliefs which 
they themselves already possessed. But suppose 

191 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

this analysis was wrong, suppose that the Ger- 
man people had not been hoodwinked, that they 
did honestly believe in the war and in its neces- 
sity. Then they would co-operate with their 
Government, go on short rations, and submit to 
discipline of all sorts and kinds in order that the 
intention of their enemies might be thwarted. 
And if they should do this would they not 
thwart it? Would not the tightening of the 
blockade intensify their determination? 

Once more, the important fact was not what 
the people had been accustomed to have, nor yet 
what they would like to have, but what they were 
willing and able to do without. The Germans in 
this generation have, to be sure, not been accus- 
tomed to privation, but there are few of the older 
people alive who do not remember a time before 
1870 when they got along very comfortably on 
what is now in Germany looked upon as priva- 
tion. Distinguished men have declared that they 
remember when rye bread once a day was their 
entire food. Nor is an abundance of food, cloth- 
ing, and fuel as old in Germany as in Great 
Britain and America. Prosperity in the Central 
Empires is a very recent thing. For them it is 
easier than for us to bear comparative privation. 
They, too, are more determined than we should 
be not to return to it because they are better 
aware of what it means, better able to realize 
that it may become necessary. Even supposing, 
therefore, that the economic distress in Germany 
should reach the point expected by the Allies, it 
would not necessarily end the war. 

192 



PROBABILITY OF GERMAN EXHAUSTION 

But the scarcity seems never to have reached 
that point. To have attained it the blockade 
must have been literally tight. There should 
have been no leaks through neutral countries. 
Evidently, too, the calculation left out of account 
the discovery of efficient substitutes and pre- 
sumed a comparative lack of adaptability in the 
German economic fabric, a certain lack of re- 
sourcefulness among German scientists. While 
the blockade has proved far more adequate than 
the Germans originally expected, it has not been 
nearly as conclusive as was necessary. Enormous 
quantities of things indispensable to the conduct 
of the war have passed through Holland and 
Scandinavia. Many substitutes entirely ade- 
quate were discovered by German scientists, and 
some materials, hitherto imported in large quan- 
tities, will never be imported again. Ways of 
getting along without others were discovered. 
Worst of all for the Allies, new resources were 
added to those of the Central Empires. The 
conquests of Poland and of Rumania, of Serbia, 
and now the plains of Italy, placed in German 
control, as in the oil-wells of Rumania, an 
adequate supply of a raw material she previously 
lacked. No doubt much inconvenience to the 
Germans resulted from the blockade. They were 
driven to dispense with butter, sugar, milk, cocoa, 
chocolate, and coffee; few were able to eat those 
prodigious meals to which they had become accus- 
tomed or to consume such amounts of fat as most 
Germans had; but real discomfort and real suf- 
fering did not become widespread. The problem 

193 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

was precisely that sort of adjustment to a given 
situation, that sort of calculation of the ratio of 
supply to demand, which the Germans best un- 
derstand how to solve and which called for pre- 
cisely that type of co-operation from the German 
people which they were already accustomed to 
give. 

The premises of economic exhaustion, more- 
over, assumed that the limited resources of the 
Germans would be offset by the unlimited re- 
sources of the Allies. The German people should 
see the contrast between starvation under au- 
tocracy and plenty under democratic rule. Here 
again the whole equation was altered by the 
economic difficulties into which the Allies them- 
selves in time fell. Already in England and 
France the pinch was felt in 1917; even in the 
United States some supplies became insufficient. 
Meat not improbably will be more and more dif- 
ficult to obtain as the war goes on. It is there- 
fore a fact — and the Germans well realize it — that 
if the war should end to-morrow they would not 
be immediately better off. They could not buy 
what does not exist; and there is not enough food 
in the world to feed it at the old rate. The Allied 
countries are scarcely able to feed themselves, 
and at the end of the war some little time must 
transpire before the men in the army can go 
back into the fields. If the war should happen 
to end in February a very large crop might be 
planted everywhere that very spring, but if the 
war ends (as not improbably it will) in the au- 
tumn of some year after the summer campaign 

194 



PROBABILITY OF GERMAN EXHAUSTION 

has proved fruitful for one side or the other, there 
will then intervene a period of nine months 
before any considerable addition to the food-sup- 
ply can take place. 

The Central Empires therefore realize that 
for some years to come they will be quite as 
dependent upon what they can raise themselves 
under a regime of peace as they are at present 
under the regime of war. The recent bad har- 
vests throughout the world have consumed the 
world's reserve of grain, meat, and cold-storage 
supplies; the great herds of cattle have been 
seriously depleted. Not for some time to come 
can those extensive reserves be replaced. The 
Germans might conceivably surrender to secure 
a share of a considerable existing supply of the 
fats they desire, but there is scarcely any reason 
why they should surrender if they cannot im- 
prove their immediate condition. They believe 
themselves better able to take care of themselves 
in the next few years by organizing Russia, 
Scandinavia, Rumania, and Serbia as a preserve 
from which the other nations can be excluded 
than they would be if they were now to make 
peace, and were at once expected to share the 
Russian harvests and herds with the Allies. War, 
moreover, enables the Government to undertake 
measures in dealing with private property which 
would be very strongly resisted in the Central 
Empires in time of peace. The scientific con- 
servation of food, its scientific production, its 
careful distribution are easier for the Government 
during the war than during peace. It may be 

195 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

that for some years the interference of the Gov- 
ernment, both in production and in distribution, 
may be essential not only in the Central Empires, 
but in Allied nations. 

We must, therefore, renounce any idea that the 
war will end as a result of the economic collapse 
of the Central Empires on the score of food or 
raw materials. Certainly, now that Russia is 
about to fall into Germany's hands, whether by 
means of a separate peace, or by the penetration 
of Russia by the Invisible Army, that possibility 
fades into insignificance. Food, of course, the 
Germans might get along without, but guns 
can scarcely be created without iron, and the 
importance, therefore, to the Germans of sup- 
plies from Russia and Scandinavia can scarcely 
be exaggerated. Rumanian and Russian oil, 
again, is an asset of the first consequence. From 
Turkey and Mesopotamia can come in time all 
the cotton that the Central Empires can use, 
the one raw material of real consequence for 
which a substitute has not been devised. A con- 
siderable accession of war material was also cap- 
tured from the Italians which will be immedi- 
ately useful to the Germans and a corresponding 
loss to the Allies. 

If all this is true, the campaign on the West 
Front must be no longer fought on the assump- 
tion that time is of no consequence, that the 
resources of the Allies in men and material are 
exhaustless, and that those of Germany are 
limited. Still less must the campaign be con- 
ducted with the idea so prevalent early in the 

196 



PROBABILITY OF GERMAN EXHAUSTION 

war that a military victory was unessential be- 
cause the economic victory was so sure. But 
these conjectures vitally affect calculations re- 
garding the length of the campaign possible in 
France, the amount of men and material that 
the Allies can afford to pay for the recovery of 
that territory, and the type of attack which it 
is possible for the Allies to deliver against the 
Germans without weakening themselves more 
than is expedient. 

The present issue between the Allies and the 
Central Empires, indeed, is not that of exhaustion 
or the blockade, but their relative ability to 
continue that type and degree of production 
essential to maintain the war. More and more 
the conflict is becoming a test of the compara- 
tive efficiency of administrative and industrial 
machinery; the extent to which co-operation 
can be perfected and friction and delay avoided; 
the ability of one Government or the other to 
foresee for long periods in advance what the 
economic necessities of the army will be, and 
to provide the machinery to manufacture them. 
Here the Germans rely upon what has been 
often regarded their greatest asset, the effici- 
ency and adequacy, the elaborate correlation 
and interrelation of their economic fabric, a 
structure they have been building with a view 
to this exact contingency for something like 
half a century. The Allies, unfortunately, are 
compelled to rely upon one largely extemporized 
for the crisis, one produced with astonishing 
speed, and, considering all obstacles which had 

197 



THE WINNING OP THE WAR 

to be overcome, a marvel of ingenuity and effi- 
ciency. Undoubtedly the greater resources are 
those of the Allies, both in material and in 
men, and no one familiar with the English, 
French, or American people will believe for a 
moment that they will not be adequate in this 
crisis. But the continuity and intensity of their 
efforts must not be in the least affected by false 
expectations of the economic collapse of Ger- 
many. It is entirely possible that Germany may 
suddenly crack and break, but, until the event 
occurs, we shall scarcely be wise to make our 
dispositions in expectation of it, as too many 
arrangements unfortunately were made in the 
first years of the war. Continuous and efficient 
production is essential to victory, and the British 
and American people cannot realize that fact 
too promptly and too definitely. 



XV 

PROBABILITY OF DEMOCRATIC REVOLT IN 
GERMANY 

THERE are few facts in the intellectual 
history of the war so striking as the extent 
to which it has led men to deny the validity of 
conclusions about history and political science 
universally accepted in 1914. German pro- 
fessors of all ranks and kinds have repeatedly 
stultified themselves by announcing propositions 
about the war which were elaborately demon- 
strated false by the very books on which their 
own reputations were based. In Allied coun- 
tries, too, a great shift in opinion has taken 
place, and on no subject more than upon German 
history and the attitude of the German people 
toward democracy. 

There is perhaps no question upon which it 
is as important to reach an intelligent conclusion, 
because our decision will in large measure govern 
our attitude toward the prosecution of the war 
itself, the character of the settlement which 
must be achieved, and the expectation of assist- 
ance from the German people themselves in the 
ending of the war and in the securing of that 

199 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

reorganization. All conclusions depend upon 
premises, and the great danger is that we shall 
prove our conclusion infallible by the simple 
expedient of assuming it as our premise. It is 
hard to see what test we can apply to this demo- 
cratic issue, if we do not judge it in the light of 
what was universally agreed to be true by his- 
torians and students of political science before 
the war, not only in Germany, but in all other 
countries, and, so far as Germany and German 
democracy are concerned, demonstrated by evi- 
dence vast in amount and of high authority. 
If this evidence be not valid, we have nothing 
better to substitute for it. 

There is little use in supposing that the prob- 
ability of democratic revolt in Germany can be 
determined by an exposition of facts in regard 
to the lack of democracy in Germany, or to the 
belief of the Germans as to what democracy 
ought to be. The vital fact to establish is 
whether the Germans attach the same value to 
democracy the Allies do. The second vital fact 
to demonstrate is whether they are willing to 
believe that the anxiety of the Allies to bring 
liberty and democracy to them, to free them 
from the incubus of Kaiser, empire, and mili- 
tarism, is literally as disinterested as it professes 
to be. What the German people do believe, not 
what they ought to believe, will be the vital 
thing. What they think the facts are will be 
of greater importance than what the truth is. 
Indeed, the more we study history the more 
we come to realize that the vital force is not the 

200 



PROBABILITY OF REVOLT IN GERMANY 

truth as later generations see it, but what men 
then alive believed it to be. Those impulses 
which result in action are the important things 
to study if we are to understand why men under- 
take great movements. 

In assuming that this democratic appeal to 
the German people would be irresistible, Allied 
statesmen supposed that the political alignment 
in Germany, as in England, France, and the 
United States, made the issue of individual 
freedom and the control of domestic politics 
paramount. They took for granted the existence 
of a political and international independence 
long regarded as unassailable, not only by them- 
selves, but by their enemies, and treated con- 
stitutional issues as if there was only one prob- 
lem to be solved, that of political and adminis- 
trative convenience. The German invariably 
approaches such questions from a different angle, 
and sees in them not only administrative con- 
venience, but also the definite relation of the 
form of government to national independence 
and international status. The problem of Federal 
and Imperial government is therefore not com- 
monly regarded by the majority of Germans as 
a constitutional or a domestic issue per se, one 
between liberalism and conservatism, between 
democracy and reaction, between the indepen- 
dence of the individual and the existence of a 
militaristic state. The imperial issue is an inter- 
national question, a choice between freedom as 
a nation and subjection to foreign influence, 
between integrity and partition, between the 

201 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

decision of German issues upon the basis of 
German interests or upon the basis of Russian, 
French, and British influence. 

The Empire is not democratic, and few Ger- 
mans think it is; still less was it a constitution 
satisfactory to the great majority at the time 
it was made; Bismarck scarcely thought of it 
as a constitutional device at all. It was an in- 
ternational alliance between Prussia and the 
South German states, which should create a 
means of common action sufficiently powerful 
to maintain the alliance in the teeth of the ex- 
pected opposition from foreign powers. Unity, 
secrecy, the correlation of power, the ability to 
decide quickly and act promptly, these were 
essential, and to them all democratic theory and 
individual convenience were ruthlessly sacrificed. 
The great object was a literal international in- 
dependence of all other powers. Its necessity 
was to them clear. Why, too, had it not been 
attained before? Because Germany had not 
been united. The attempt to settle local German 
issues in a particular way had enabled foreign 
countries, for the most part, to settle them in 
accordance with their own convenience rather 
than in accordance with German interests. It 
became, therefore, for a time necessary to sacri- 
fice local issues, to bury the hatred of South 
Germany and Prussia, to postpone political re- 
forms until the great sore, open for five hundred 
years, could be closed and healed. 

This became the object of German patriotism — 
to put the Fatherland first and all state, indi- 

202 



PROBABILITY OF REVOLT IN GERMANY 

vidual, and local interests far in the distance; 
to place international independence, national 
strength, diplomatic supremacy first, and to make 
everything else wait upon their achievement. 
Democracy was thus swept to one side as a 
necessary obstacle in the way of international 
independence, not because it was not good, nor 
yet because the Germans would not like to have 
it, still less because they do not believe it de- 
sirable, but because they did not believe it could 
be attained until the question of international 
independence had been definitely settled in their 
favor. They expect this to be achieved during 
the war. They claim that they will then wel- 
come democracy with open arms. 

The second difficulty, which was experienced 
in Allied countries and which led people to sup- 
pose that the democratic appeal to the German 
people would be irresistible and cause a revolt 
against the constituted authority during the war, 
lay in their analysis of the German people. It 
assumed that they have not yet fully understood 
democracy, have been deceived and hoodwinked 
by the military class, kept perhaps in forcible 
subjection, certainly educated in false ideas about 
the world and about other countries and their 
intentions. Such a view maintains that the Ger- 
mans only need to learn what the truth is to 
espouse it. Reduced to lowest terms, it means 
that the attitude of the German people toward 
the war is not based on honest conviction and a 
study of the real facts; that they do not believe 
in war, in brutality, in conquest; that they agree 

14 203 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

fundamentally with the Allies and have merely 
to be told what the situation is to throw aside 
militarism and imperialism with horror. 

I have never known a German or heard of one 
who could listen to this sort of an analysis of Ger- 
man character with patience. The Germans 
vehemently deny that they need to learn from 
the Allies what democracy ought to be. They 
insist that there has never been a country where 
the love of pure and theoretical democracy was 
greater than it has been in Germany. They 
explain earnestly that German unity itself was 
postponed primarily because of the uncompromis- 
ing refusal of liberals and democrats to accept 
anything less than the full measure of democracy 
and because of their disdainful refusal of any 
compromise which the international situation 
made possible of attainment. The chief prob- 
lem of the Empire and of the Prussian state since 
1870 has been the irreconcilable attitude of the 
strong democratic popular minority. Few Ger- 
mans theoretically object to the propositions 
about political reform in Prussia and in the 
Empire upon which Allied authorities lay so much 
stress. The Prussian three-class system, oral 
voting, the present apportionment of seats in 
the Imperial Reichstag, most of them consider 
undesirable international expedients. They would 
prefer a real responsibility of the Ministry to 
the popular chambers, an accountability for 
finance as in England, a complete initiative in 
legislation possessed by the lower and popular 
chambers, but they have hitherto agreed that 

204 



PROBABILITY OF REVOLT IN GERMANY 

until the foreign issues were settled such reforms 
could not safely be introduced without weakening 
the aggressive strength of the Empire. 

If Germans are certain that the form of govern- 
ment is to be decided with relation to inter- 
national issues, if they are sure that they them- 
selves understand and appreciate democracy, they 
are no less convinced that they understand why 
Germany is not already democratic, why the 
Empire is still an anomaly, a diplomatic and in- 
ternational expedient instead of a real constitu- 
tion. The attitude of the Allies themselves and 
their own policies toward Germany is the reason. 
For centuries they prevented the formation in 
Germany of a strong central government and did 
their best to keep the country weak and dis- 
united. Stein, therefore, found in Germany and 
Prussia at the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
tury feudalistic survivals and particularistic 
vested interests which strong government in 
England and France had long ago swept away. 
They were embedded, however, in tradition and 
in law. To get rid of their cramping and fettering 
influence it was necessary to make the state 
superior to the individual, to ride rough-shod 
over vested rights and feudal privileges, to sweep 
away prescriptions and charters, and thus clear 
the ground for the development of the country. 
To have taken a majority vote upon the aboli- 
tion of such privileges would have defeated all 
reform. Here began the doctrine of force as a 
necessary element in the construction of the 
state, the doctrine of the superior obligation 

205 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

of the interests of the state over those of the 
individual, the beginning of ruthlessness, of 
Schrecklichkeit . 

When Bismarck came to study the situation 
and saw the helplessness of Germany and of 
Prussia in Europe he found that international 
situation which seemed to him so intolerable 
recognized and consecrated by many treaties and 
agreements. To accept the English and French 
view of the obligation of international law was 
to agree, he felt, that they possessed a prescrip- 
tive right to interfere in German domestic poli- 
tics upon such considerations as seemed good to 
them. This was to recognize that real inter- 
national independence for Germany could not be 
secured. Such a conclusion was impossible and 
intolerable. Independence must be attained, 
but it could be had only by force, by the abolition 
of the old agreements, by breaking treaties, by 
denying that any past agreement could give any 
country a vested right to interfere with German 
interests or German politics. To expect the 
other powers to consent, to suppose that they 
would not do their best to interfere with any 
change in the old arrangement, was idle. All 
their relations with one another depended upon 
their ability to control Germany between them, 
their ability to keep Germany weak. Such an 
issue could be solved only by "blood and iron." 

The importance and accuracy of this logic 
must be demonstrated to the people at large, 
Bismarck saw, because the degree to which they 
would accept it would become a necessary and 

206 



PROBABILITY OF REVOLT IN GERMANY 

significant part of the ability of the state to act 
in the maintenance of the new international in- 
dependence won in 1870. The state, therefore, 
undertook a definite propaganda about German 
history in schools and universities, and had Ger- 
man history in the light of this view written by 
such men as Treitschke, Von Sybel, Delbruck, 
and others. German literature became impreg- 
nated by it; the atmosphere of German life 
reflected and very soon absorbed it. For it, an 
intellectual background already existed in the 
admiration of German literature, of the German 
language, of the supremacy already accorded 
German scholarship in science, philology, his- 
tory, and the like. Such an intellectual back- 
ground made the movement for Deutschtum con- 
vincing to the German people and proved to 
them that literal political and international in- 
dependence for Germany was an axiom because 
Germany was a nation at least the equal of any 
and the superior of most. 

To this end the great movements in German 
history were depicted and analyzed — the blood 
and slaughter of the later Reformation period; 
the wasting of Germany during the Thirty 
Years' War, when the French and the Swedes 
harried the land until the exhausted states 
agreed to pay the price they were determined 
to exact; the vassalage of Germany to Austria 
in the interest of Europe during the eighteenth 
century; the humiliation cf Prussia by Napo- 
leon; the control of Germany by the Metternich 
system, and the constant interference during the 

207 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

nineteenth century of England, France, and 
Russia under cover of the Treaty of Vienna. 
In particular, the opposition of the early liberal 
movement to German unity was developed and 
thrown into strong relief. The German people 
were taught that democracy was synonymous 
with weakness, with subjection to foreigners, 
with opposition to a strong, active state able to 
raise an efficient army. 

How may we expect them to react to the offer 
of democracy by the Allies in the light of these 
beliefs and premises? They see in the present 
war an attempt to restore the old condition of 
affairs before 1870. Call it liberty, democracy, 
freedom, by any name it spells to the German 
virtual conquest and the dictation of German 
international and domestic politics from London, 
Paris, and Petrograd. They are sure, too, that 
the origin of the war is easily explained by the 
tradition of German history; that the desire to 
introduce democracy and thus restore the old, 
decentralized, amorphous government is exactly 
the policy France and Great Britain followed 
for two centuries and more. Are not the Allies 
obligingly frank in the disclosure of their pur- 
pose? Do not prime ministers, novelists, poets, 
and journalists insist that militarism in Germany 
must be abolished and the Hohenzollerns de- 
throned so that the menace of German strength 
may be destroyed? They believe the Allies in- 
veigh against the Empire precisely because it 
is capable of initiating and directing a great 
war in the defense of Deutschtum. They deride 

208 



PROBABILITY OF REVOLT IN GERMANY 

the Allied orators who shout with one breath 
for democracy and freedom and in the next 
proclaim their fear of Germany, of German 
strength, ability, determination to be free. Do 
they not inform the German people in season 
and out of season that they are to be freed by 
the war from kings, kaisers, and militarism and 
be given democracy, liberty — and weakness? 

The German official and military class, and 
the bulk of the intellectual class as well, have 
never been slow to follow the lead of Bismarck 
and stigmatize as traitors to Deutschtum those 
political parties and all their adherents by what- 
ever name or creed willing to sacrifice ever so 
little of international prestige for administrative 
efficiency in the interest of democracy and elec- 
toral reform. Such electoral changes would 
make considerable alterations in the unity and 
strength of the Government highly probable. 
The Germans admit with grief and rage that 
for generations the best allies of the foreigners 
were the Germans themselves. Germany was 
conquered always and held in subjection by 
and with the aid of Germans; it were otherwise 
impossible. Such conquests must be made im- 
possible in the future. No German must be 
tolerated who would for a moment countenance 
co-operation of any sort, kind, or degree with 
the foreigner. Hence there has been since 1860 
scant patience in Germany with those who do 
not place first national integrity and prestige, 
and who are not willing to sacrifice to it all 
present administrative convenience and all theo- 

209 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

retical considerations. The majority consider 
all others not enlightened men, but fools; not 
liberals, but traitors. 

W-hen, therefore, the Allies hold that the Social 
Democrats and the Socialists will bring about a 
democratic revolt in Germany which will cripple 
the Government in the prosecution of the war 
they are leaning upon a broken reed. If our 
knowledge of Germany before the war is of the 
slightest validity or accuracy, on German issues — 
on the question of domestic reform, the desir- 
ability of democracy, the necessity of a re- 
apportionment of seats — there has been and still 
is an overwhelming favorable majority. These 
men form the strength of the Social Democrats 
of which party the Socialists pure and simple 
are only a minority. But the slogan of the 
party is not political reform at all costs, but 
political reform without injury to the diplomatic 
and international settlement of Bismarck. The 
Empire and international independence are to 
come first and reform is to follow after they have 
been made safe. 

The only debate, therefore, in Germany has 
been whether the moment for reform had come, 
whether it was not now possible without danger 
to the international position of the Empire to 
undertake it. At times there have been differ- 
ences of opinion and large majorities have voted 
that the moment was propitious, only to be later 
convinced by messages from the authorities 
that they had made a mistake. They have 

wished to take no chances and propose to adopt 

210 



PROBABILITY OF REVOLT IN GERMANY 

no reforms which might conceivably hamper the 
state in the prosecution of a war. The probabil- 
ity, therefore, is unfortunately slight that a ma- 
jority can be found in Germany during- the war 
for the adoption of those precise measures which 
all have long agreed would most decidedly weaken 
the state and prevent the adequate prosecution 
of the war. The issue of domestic reform or a 
united front to the foreigner is so old in Germany, 
now so well identified with Bismarck, the Old 
Emperor, the success of the Empire, and the 
prosperity of modern Germany that it is to be 
feared that those who believe democratic revolt 
in Germany possible against such influences, reach 
their conclusion by virtue of the strength of their 
desire to believe it. 

Nor is it probable that the jealousy of Prussia 
in the South German states will lead them to 
revolt against the Empire and institute a new 
and democratic regime. The fact seems to be 
that the real opponents of democratic reforms in 
the Empire have not been the Prussians, but the 
South Germans themselves. To reapportion the 
seats in the Reichstag would decrease enormously 
the influence of the smaller states. To make the 
Ministry and Chancellor responsible to the Reich- 
stag would destroy the power of the Bundesrat, 
and therefore the control of German politics by 
the states, and put it into the hands of a legisla- 
tive body controlled beyond all hope of change 
by the numerical superiority of the Prussian 
delegation. It has long been agreed by the Ger- 
mans that such changes would destroy the sov- 

211 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

ereignty of the small states, mediatize their 
princes, and practically merge the states them- 
selves in the political system of Prussia. The 
appointment of the Bavarian Prime Minister as 
Chancellor was made in all probability to placate 
this very opposition and to guarantee that the 
Imperial promises of reform in Prussia would not 
lead to changes in the Empire detrimental to the 
autonomy of the small states. 

There has also been in Germany a large and 
influential section of the Liberal and Democratic 
wing which has held with Bismarck that German 
democracy cannot be necessarily of the English, 
French, or American pattern. It must be in- 
digenous and must grow out of German traditions 
and German expedients. To suppose that a re- 
sponsible Ministry of the English type would 
work well in the Empire is to close one's eyes to 
the difficulties which France, Italy, and Spain 
have experienced in the attempt to transplant 
the English system. Presidential democracy of 
the American type the Germans have regarded 
impossible. In any case the real strength of 
English and American democracy comes from the 
fact that the central legislative body always rep- 
resents local entities of prime administrative im- 
portance. There the democratic, elective sys- 
tem is an essential part of any government. 
This is not true in Germany, where ordinary 
e very-day affairs would go on very well without 
any elective machinery at all, where the real 
administration is monarchical and not democratic, 
executive and not legislative in character, where 

212 



PROBABILITY OF REVOLT IN GERMANY 

the real work is done by a permanent organiza- 
tion of paid officials, appointed during good be- 
havior on the basis of rigid examinations and 
strict civil service regulations. The Germans 
have felt, that the best English and American 
authorities were right — democracy of the Anglo- 
Saxon pattern is a type of government which 
must grow from below and cannot be imposed 
from above; that it certainly is not the kind of 
government which can be successfully imposed 
by external influence upon a people whose tradi- 
tions are hostile. Democracy cannot come from 
above. Still less, the Germans hold, can it satis- 
factorily come from without. 

The keynote of democracy is self-government, 
not government by others, the decision by each 
nation of the way in which its affairs shall be 
conducted, not the attempt of one nation to 
decide the expedient form of government for 
another. Its imposition by force or by treaty 
upon an unwilling people, who had not of their 
own initiative adopted it, would be a logical 
absurdity and a moral crime against the very 
theory of democracy itself. For the Allies, there- 
fore, to talk of the necessity of deposing the 
Hohenzollerns by force and dissolving the Em- 
pire as a precedent condition of any treaty with 
Germany, is to commit a democratic inconsist- 
ency so absurd as to demonstrate to the Germans 
that the Allies intend to use democracy, not to 
produce administrative results for the Germans, 
but in order to change the international status 
of Germany in their own favor. No doubt this 

213 



THE WINNING OP THE WAR 

is "one of those truths as is the whole truth and 
a little left over," but it is idle for the Allies 
to protest against it and declare their entire in- 
nocence of aggression, their very real disinterest 
and desire to promote future German happiness. 
Unless the Germans accept those protestations 
at face value there will certainly be no demo- 
cratic revolt, unless one undertaken, like the 
hypocritical restoration of the Bourbons in 
France in 1814, to strengthen the international 
position of the Empire. 

The importance of these conclusions about the 
German people to all thinking about the origin 
of the war, about its prosecution, and its conclu- 
sion, is entirely beyond the power of exaggeration. 
It is impossible to suppose in the face of such 
traditions that the Germans are really deceived 
and hoodwinked by the Kaiser and the military 
class. That the Kaiser and the military class are 
entirely wrong I firmly believe, but I also see that 
the Germans believe them to be right, that the 
people are honestly in the war, that they mean 
to fight it to the bitter end and regard their 
tactics of aggression, of ruthlessness, of calcu- 
lated brutality as thrust upon them by the cove- 
tousness and greed of the Allies. They glory in 
the ethics of Pan-Germanism and are sure the 
war has proved the expediency of the political 
dictum which put the state above the individual 
and which banished ethics, morality, and 
"phrases about humanity" from intelligent state- 
craft. It is idle to fight the war with the idea of 
converting the Germans. It is idle to sign a 

214 



PROBABILITY OF REVOLT IN GERMANY 

treaty of peace with the idea of changing Ger- 
man government so that the aggressive use of 
German strength will become impossible. The 
Germans, if they wish, can use democracy as well 
as any other form of government to that end. 
No doubt their logic is absurd and their inter- 
pretation of history wrong, their ascription of 
motives to the Allies false; but for all that they 
believe them to be true, and what they believe 
is of vastly more consequence to the prosecution 
of the war and to its ending than the truth itself. 
To conduct the war on the basis of any other 
notion of the German people, to frame peace 
with any other idea of their attitude toward the 
Allies and toward democracy, is to risk the loss 
of the victory after it is won. 



XVI 

THE SOLIDARITY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 

THE attitude of the allies of Germany toward 
her during the war and after the conclusion 
of peace was seen at the outset to be one of the 
most significant elements in a complex situation. 
If they were convinced of the mutuality of po- 
litical and economic interests, if they really 
believed in the desirability and expediency of the 
Pan-Germanic Confederation, accepted it as nec- 
essary for defense, and regarded economic co- 
operation as essential to adequate commercial 
development, then the military task before the 
Allied armies would be great indeed. Moreover, 
only a decision upon this question could in last 
resort determine the extent of the military victory 
which the Allies must win. No very long or 
elaborate consideration was needed to convince 
the Allies of the expediency and desirability of a 
war directed explicitly against German autocracy 
and militarism. Formally and officially the Ger- 
man people were separated from the Kaiser and 
the army, and a distinction no less important 
maintained between Germany and her allies in 
hope of separating the latter from her during the 

216 



THE SOLIDARITY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 

war and after it. Indeed, to conquer Germany 
with the help of the German people and of her 
present allies would be one sort of a military 
and political problem. To conquer the German 
army and bureaucracy, supported and sustained 
loyally by the German people and their present 
allies, would be a very different task. The mag- 
nitude of the undertaking involved in the sub- 
jugation of Germany, and Austria, and Hungary, 
and the Balkans, and Turkey, gave pause to the 
most confident and optimistic. Some sort of 
conclusion on these significant questions of loy- 
alty in the Central Empires would also determine 
many problems of peace. One sort of a settle- 
ment would definitely guard the Allies against the 
hostility of an unrepentant Germany, separated 
from Austria-Hungary, the Balkans, and Turkey. 
Quite another settlement must be evolved to 
render them safe from the continued enmity of 
the entire group of powers fighting under the 
German banner. The estimate of the present 
and future solidarity of Mittel-Europa became 
an element in the diplomatic and military situa- 
tion second only in importance to the estimate of 
the German people. 

Indeed, such a reconstruction of the German 
and Austrian Empires as the Allies at once de- 
clared desirable was so thorough and sweeping 
as to presuppose the use of other forces than 
armies for its creation and maintenance. The 
Allied statesmen concluded it to be already the 
literal aim and ambition of the peoples of the 
Central Empires themselves who had hitherto 

217 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

been thwarted in its achievement by artificial 
hindrances and fortuitous circumstances. Nat- 
urally, the true basis of such a belief was the 
entire lack of organic strength in the German 
and Austrian Empires. They were shells, ar- 
tificial structures, weak in foundation and in 
the middle story. The shock of war might well 
topple them over and resolve the fabric into its 
elements which would prefer, if left to themselves, 
to combine in other ways. The Allies, therefore, 
did not intend, as the statesmen of the Central 
Empires promptly charged, to effect such a re- 
organization at the point of the sword. They 
looked upon it as the true ambition of the 
peoples themselves which nothing but the in- 
cubus of army and bureaucracy had hitherto 
thwarted. 

They pointed to the admitted lack of racial 
unity in Austria and in Hungary, to the lack 
of a consensus of opinion in favor of the con- 
tinuance of the form of central government as 
it had existed since 1867. Nor were the German 
and Austrian Empires geographical entities; 
neither was the result of normal political associa- 
tion; both were created in the past as the result 
of feudal relationships, of conquest, of marriage 
and inheritance. This was the result of the over- 
lordship of the old Holy Roman Empire; that 
of the election of the Archduke of Austria as 
King of Hungary; the other he acquired by elec- 
tion as King of Bohemia, arrogated by prescrip- 
tion into a hereditary right of succession. Ger- 
many, moreover, was definitely established to be 

218 



THE SOLIDARITY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 

the result of the purchase of Brandenburg by the 
Hohenzollerns, of the inheritance by that royal 
house of Prussia and of Cleves and Julich, of the 
conquest of Poland in the eighteenth century, of 
the diplomatic annexation of Saxony in 1814, 
of the conquest of Hanover and other North 
German states in 1866, of Alsace in 1870. The 
final adhesion of the South German states to the 
Empire in 1871 was effected by the military 
power of Prussia and by the diplomatic pressure 
exerted by Bismarck through his knowledge of 
their negotiations with Napoleon III. Here, 
therefore, were two artificial aggregates, created 
by force and craft, by diplomacy and the accident 
of marriage, with nothing better than a tardy ac- 
quiescence on the part of the population. The 
existing governments were in no sense the evolu- 
tion of popular will. Their strength had lain, 
like that of the old Roman Empire, in the excel- 
lent local government carried on by the bureau- 
cracy, in the official educational system which 
had taught the people the official interpretation 
of history and of necessity in politics, in the ex- 
cellence of the old Roman law. 

The Allies, therefore, did not desire to re- 
organize Germany, Austria, or Hungary at the 
point of the sword. They wished by the sword 
to remove the tyranny which had so long im- 
posed uncongenial expedients upon the people of 
those empires. They would provide an oppor- 
tunity for the people themselves to adopt that 
form of political association most agreeable to 
them, and would make possible the abolition of 

15 219 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

that political connection which had never had 
real roots in national sentiment or local interests. 
The Allied statesmen, however, naturally as- 
sumed that the normal reaction of the people, 
when they should attain freedom of choice, 
would lead them to espouse that sort of democ- 
racy and liberty already established in Great 
Britain, France, and the United States. That 
they would not so elect, that they would vote 
to continue the old system, was scouted during 
the first years of the war by all British and 
French observers who had resided any length of 
time in Austria or in the Balkans. The Allies 
had only the kaisers and the military minority 
to fight, the people could be depended upon to 
spurn their authority at that identical instant 
when protection from the Allies could be assured 
them. A defeat of the Germans in France would 
thus precipitate the deluge in Austria, Hungary, 
and the Balkans. Upon this supposition the 
war was begun and to that end was prosecuted 
for over three years. 

It is vital to study its history with the realiza- 
tion that the Allied strategy of victory assumed a 
positive certainty of internal assistance from the 
Central Empires which at once made futile and 
inexpedient any military movements in the Bal- 
kans beyond demonstrations in force, beyond 
the creation of armies ready promptly to assist 
the southern Slavs once they had revolted. To 
undertake an elaborate offensive campaign from 
Saloniki would be to raise that very issue of the 
literal defense of Austria-Hungary against foreign 

220 



THE SOLIDARITY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 

invasion which seemed to statesmen in London 
and Paris the one eventuality which might turn 
the expected disloyalty into a grudging but 
effective co-operation with the monarchy. The 
calculations upon which victory rested were 
once more not military, but diplomatic and 
political, and involved opinions and conclusions 
regarding the imponderables, whose accuracy 
could not in the nature of things be commensurate 
with their importance. Moreover, any error in 
these assumptions would as instantly invalidate 
the adequacy of the military dispositions based 
upon them, and as effectively postpone victory, 
as any defeat in the field possibly could. 

The Allied formula of victory was compounded 
first of the expectation that German economic 
exhaustion would reduce the size of the army 
which must be beaten and destroy its morale. 
The second ingredient was the belief that the 
war would be cut short by a democratic revolt in 
Germany and hence that the army need provide 
for no prolonged resistance. The third element 
was the expectation of such assistance from dis- 
sensions in Austria-Hungary that the Allied 
armies might devote themselves to the destroy- 
ing of the German army in France, thus dimin- 
ished and weakened, with full confidence that the 
first Allied victory would set free internal forces 
in the Central Empires which would make vic- 
tory not only complete but permanent. The last 
element alone was military and the notion of the 
size, character, and efficiency of the army, the 
extent of its operations, the fields upon which it 

221 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

might campaign, the objectives it must directly 
achieve, were all conditioned by the non-military 
elements of the formula. None seemed to 
realize that error in the latter would be as fatal 
as defeat in the field, or, indeed, that a sufficient 
degree of error might make victory in the field 
all but impossible, if it did not insure defeat 
itself. 

The expectations of revolt in Austria-Hungary 
involved not only known facts about diplomatic 
and constitutional history, but assumptions in 
regard to the conclusions the Austrian, Hunga- 
rian, and Slavic peoples would draw from them 
which were neither probable nor dependable in 
the light of history as it had been written before 
the war, but which became vital to the validity 
of the calculation. The Allied analysis involved 
the belief that these various sections demanding 
nationality, autonomy, and democracy were liter- 
ally oppressed, deprived of real liberty, and in 
need, therefore, of a very practical kind of free- 
dom. If the slightest reliance could have been 
placed in what the people of the Central Empires 
had hitherto written about their own adminis- 
trative interests, the various provinces of Austria 
and Hungary, the various states of Germany, al- 
ready possessed as complete local autonomy in 
the direction of their own affairs as any part of 
England, France, or the United States. Indeed, 
they wielded rather greater authority in local 
administration than did the counties in England 
or the departments in France. The oppression 

about which the most radical complained was 

222 



THE SOLIDARITY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 

theoretical rather than actual, and expressed a 
national ambition rather than a lack of individual 
freedom and liberty. They had in mind rather 
the satisfying of an intangible longing for the 
name of political independence than the achieve- 
ment of certain practical reforms. 

Indeed, the true discontent in Austria and in 
Hungary was with the German and Magyar 
domination. By democracy they meant that 
the Slavs, already the numerical majority, should 
acquire a more absolute control of domestic 
politics and administration than they then had. 
The program did not involve fundamental 
changes in law, administration, or the form of cen- 
tral or local government. They did not wish 
to dissolve the Empire or to renounce political 
association with each other. Austria and Hun- 
gary were already federated states and the ques- 
tion was which of the national elements should 
control policy, which of them should dominate 
the others. The Germans felt that the Slavs 
had too much power, an idea which the Slavs 
heartily reciprocated. Both wished all the power. 
This was scarcely democracy according to Brit- 
ish, French, and American thinking. Indeed, 
the Czechs already dominated Austria. The 
leading ministers had for a generation or more 
been chosen from their number, and the policy 
of the Empire had favored them to such an extent 
that the Pan-Germanic movement in Austria was 
a vehement protest against this Slavophile 
politics. 

But the Allied statesmen assumed that a de- 

223 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

sire for autonomy was the same as a wish for 
democracy, that the notion of nationality was 
the real equivalent of liberty and freedom as they 
understood those terms. Unfortunately, the na- 
tional lines both in Austria and in Hungary were 
not clear. The various nationalities did not oc- 
cupy neat geographical entities, easily divided 
from one another and already provided with 
definite local government. Each race wished to 
rule where it was in the majority, and to treat the 
minority in that particular province exactly as 
the Germans had dealt with the population in 
Alsace-Lorraine, in Poland, and in Schleswig. 
They desired by political oppression to erase the 
national consciousness of the minority and to ab- 
sorb the latter into the majority. The Czechs 
themselves were so overwhelmingly in control of 
the local government in Bohemia that the Ger- 
mans were scarcely able to do better than to 
register a vehement protest. To the Czechs au- 
tonomy meant an ability to do the oppressing 
rather more completely than they were already 
doing it. 

While it was true that the political bonds of 
association in Austria-Hungary had never been 
in our sense strong or the product of natural 
growth, it was probably an error to assume that 
there were no natural and traditional lines of as- 
sociation. Latin Christianity was the true tie 
between the Austro-Hungarian people. For cen- 
turies they had looked upon themselves as the 
outpost of the Roman Catholic Church, the 
leaders in the great crusade against the Arian 

224 



THE SOLIDARITY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 

heresy which prevailed among the Russian Slavs. 
Here was a deep and abiding influence for unity, 
reaching back into the past for more than a 
thousand years and making truly difficult that 
sort of political association with the Slavs of the 
Greek Church and of Russian dominion, which 
their racial affinities would otherwise have pro- 
duced. Austria-Hungary was the Roman Catho- 
lic nation par excellence and the religious tie had 
been in the past strong enough to outweigh many 
difficulties of politics and administration. 

These same people had also become during the 
last generation definitely conscious of the value 
of co-operation in commercial development, often 
called the economics of nationalization. They 
saw very clearly that they must all employ the 
same outlet to the ocean trade, that they had all 
similarly suffered from the fact that the Danube 
was the only water system available for their use, 
that the Iron Gates were long a bar to naviga- 
tion, and that the Danube emptied into the 
Black Sea behind the defenses of Constantinople. 
The possession of Constantinople by the Ger- 
mans was therefore regarded by the Austro- 
Hungarians as a great boon, as the achievement of 
one of their own greatest political and interna- 
tional ambitions. It had opened the Black Sea 
and made the Danube a great highway. They 
were all intent upon the retention of Trieste and 
of developing and strengthening the control of 
Austria-Hungary over the Adriatic. They found 
in the past half-century that this type of co- 
operation was profitable to them all, more profit- 

225 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

able than the continuation of the old traditional 
customs warfare. They also saw the real profit 
in an economic union with the German Empire 
and with the Balkan states. The identity of 
economic interest of all these states had before 
the war become a fact regarded in them as be- 
yond dispute. 1 

Such an economic tariff union, however, was 
difficult to maintain without some sort of po- 
litical association. They saw very clearly that 
their hold upon Constantinople, their ability to 
open the Danube, to retain possession of the 
Adriatic, the power to ship goods through the 
English Channel, all depended upon close co- 
operation between them in international affairs. 
The strength of Mittel-Europa, its existence even 
as an entity, with a definite policy and a united 
purpose, was a prerequisite of the achievement 
of all or any of these aims. Economic profit in 
a very real sense depended for them upon inter- 
national status and political unity, upon the 
willingness to sacrifice somewhat of local ambi- 
tions in the general interest of the economic de- 
velopment of a country hitherto so decidedly 
backward. 

There should, therefore, have been no doubt 
that the people of the Central Empires had be- 
fore them no simple choice between something 
good and something bad. They must choose 
between a variety of disagreeable alternatives, 
none of them entirely desirable, nor yet entirely 

x See, however, M. Cheradaine's emphatic opinion to the contrary 
in his numerous books. 

226 



THE SOLIDARITY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 

expedient, all of them in a measure certain to 
involve consequences which they would choose 
to avoid. If they satisfied the traditional desire 
for autonomy, they must sacrifice the profits 
which they very well knew were to be had by 
the creation of the tariff union, whose real ef- 
ficiency would depend upon close political and 
international co-operation. If their desire for 
autonomy involved a disruption of the German 
and Austrian Empires, it would necessarily mean 
the sacrifice of the international position, which 
had hitherto enabled them to control Constan- 
tinople and to have a certain assurance of free- 
dom of exit from the British Channel. Certainly 
it had preserved to them their control of the 
Adriatic, and, once lost, the Adriatic would 
become an Italian lake. On the other hand, 
if they preferred to choose in the future as they 
had in the past, they must expect in the future, 
as in the past, to sacrifice their political ambitions, 
their notion of democratic expediency, their ideas 
of political reform, and that intangible but power- 
ful urge toward the name of political indepen- 
dence. They were between the upper and the 
nether millstone. What they really wanted was 
the two alternatives combined, and they could 
not have both at once. 

The failure of Allied diplomacy "to raise the 
wind" in Mittel-Europa was complete. No 
democratic revolt broke out in Germany or in 
Austria; the Czechs in Bohemia were disap- 
pointingly quiet; the Croatians and southern 
Slavs remained loyal. The much-heralded and 

mi 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

widely expected disturbances and revolts upon 
the death of Francis Joseph failed to materialize, 
and Charles quietly succeeded to the throne. 
Thus far there has come no adequate evidence of 
serious hostility between Austria and Germany, 
Hungary and Germany, or between Austria and 
Hungary. In the parliaments the usual bicker- 
ing over local issues continued, but clear traces 
of disloyalty to the war or of an unwillingness to 
prosecute it with earnestness and conviction have 
been absolutely lacking. In the Balkans, Bul- 
garia and Turkey never wavered in their alle- 
giance, while Greece made an unexpected and 
prolonged resistance to the diplomatic pressure 
of the Allies. All the first Allied computations 
regarding the winning of the war had been based 
upon expectations of disloyalty which were not 
fulfilled. The result was the complete invalida- 
tion of Allied plans and the loss of the war in the 
east. 

Nor was Allied diplomacy calculated to foster 
and strengthen the sentiment of disloyalty, the 
conviction that the war was being fought in the 
interests of the suppressed nationalities, upon 
which so much depended. On the contrary, it 
unfortunately gave color to the official state- 
ments and explanations which the German and 
Austrian Governments furnished their people in 
regard to the origin of the war and its purposes. 
They declared it a war fought literally in defense 
of their own political and international integrity. 
They charged the Allies with designs to crush 
and destroy them, to rob them of territory which 



THE SOLIDARITY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 

they regarded as essential to their protection, to 
weaken the administrative structure upon which 
they depended to direct their armies in the field. 
They found proof of these assertions in the 
speeches of Lloyd George, of Clemenceau, and 
of President Wilson, all of whom had frankly and 
publicly avowed the intention of their respective 
nations to continue the war until German mili- 
tarism had been crushed and extirpated, and that 
sort of a polity, that type of defense, that sort of 
future development which those peoples had long 
regarded as imperative had been made impossible 
in the future. It cannot be denied that such 
diplomatic objectives were essential to obtain 
the co-operation of the nations opposed to the 
Central Empires. There are very few who have 
not believed such objectives imperative to the 
continued prosecution of the war by these na- 
tions in loyal alliance. Few outside the Central 
Empires will maintain that such a policy was 
really aggressive or spoke the language of im- 
perialism and vindictive hatred. But was it not 
idle to suppose that the people of Mittel-Europa 
would accept such a construction of it? Indeed, 
there were many who saw in the restatements 
of Allied aims by Lloyd George and Presi- 
dent Wilson in January, 1918, an anxiety to 
deal with this very implication and to reassure 
the Austrian and Hungarian people on these 
very points, as well as to answer adequately the 
diplomatic demands of the Russians. 

At Paris a formal economic conference was 
held at which a war after the war upon the trade 

229 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

of the Central Empires was determined upon. 
Official announcements of this decision were made 
by the French and British Governments and 
frank statements published of the sort of war- 
fare which they expected would destroy the ef- 
ficiency of German competition in the future. 
This seemed to the people of the Central Em- 
pires the clearest possible proof of the animus 
with which the Allies entered the war. Had 
they not always been told by their own Govern- 
ments of the iron ring, drawn tighter and tighter 
about Germany by English jealousy of German 
trade and commercial development? 

The formal pledge given to France by Great 
Britain and Russia to restore Belgian neutrality 
and the possession of Alsace-Lorraine would re- 
sult, no one denied, in the loss by the Germans 
of the offensive strategic position in the west. 
Indeed, one of the prime Allied objects in fighting 
the war, one of the chief results with which it 
must end, was this loss by Germany, the stronger 
power, of the offensive position. A public pledge 
had already been made by the Allies to restore 
the kingdom of Poland and to include within 
the frontiers of the new state Prussian and Aus- 
trian Poland. The Germans were vividly aware 
that Prussian Poland contained the military de- 
fenses of Berlin and the Austrians were not 
likely to forget that their share of Poland con- 
tained Cracow and the military approaches upon 
Vienna. Denmark, again, had been promised the 
province of Schleswig, torn from her in 1864, 
and whose population still contained a large pro- 

230 



THE SOLIDARITY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 

portion of Danes. In that province was also 
the German naval base of Kiel; through it ran 
the Kiel Canal. The loss of that province would 
destroy the control of the Baltic by the German 
fleet, capture their naval base, render vulnerable 
Hamburg and Wilhelmshaven, and make possible 
an attack upon the Elbe from Danish soil. It 
was clear that such objectives as these would rob 
Germany of all strategic frontiers of the slightest 
value. 

Formal pledges had also been given to Italy 
which undoubtedly included the Trentino and 
in all probability Trieste and the Austrian 
Adriatic provinces. The Trentino was the mil- 
itary door to the valley of the Inn and Vienna, 
the key to the Austrian defensive and offensive 
position on the south. Trieste was Austria's 
only commercial gateway to the sea, her only 
possible outlet unless she obtained control of the 
Balkans. A new and enlarged Serbia had many 
times been promised, and a map, published in 
1917 by the Serbian minister at London with 
semi-official sanction, included in the new state 
Macedonia, Albania, Novi-Bazar, the Austrian 
provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the 
southern Slav and Croatian provinces of both 
Austria and Hungary. This state would then 
occupy the remainder of the Adriatic shore not 
ceded to Italy and would intervene between the 
new Italian possessions around Trieste and the 
Austrian crown estates in the Tyrol. Two con- 
siderable and presumably powerful states would 
have been created between Austria, Hungary, 

231 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

and the sea. In the north unofficial hopes had 
been held out of an independent Bohemia which 
would thus rob the Hapsburg crown of its 
largest and wealthiest possession. There would 
be left of Austria the provinces of Upper and 
Lower Austria and the crown lands of the Tyrol, 
the so-called German provinces. From one of 
the largest states in Europe, she would have been 
reduced to one of the smallest, with a population 
not exceeding ten millions of souls. 

Nor was this all. Hungary should cede to 
Serbia the Slavic provinces in the south and 
should deliver Transylvania, almost one-third 
the area of the Hungarian dominion, to the Ru- 
manians, who would thus sit astride the Car- 
pathians with the keys of the Danube in their 
hands. Only the Magyar portions of Hungary 
would remain, shorn of their natural defenses, 
robbed of the control of the great river, exposed 
in the middle of the Hungarian plain to the 
hostile states, all larger than they, which would 
now surround them. They, too, would be per- 
manently cut off from the sea. They would lose 
their seacoast on the Adriatic and the provinces 
leading to it, and with it their commercial future 
as they had hitherto seen it. The Balkans 
would be delivered over to Serbia, Rumania, and 
Greece. Bulgaria would lose to Rumania her 
control of the Danube; to Serbia she would 
sacrifice Macedonia; and not improbably to Rus- 
sia, according to the original plans, the seacoast 
of the Black Sea, in order to provide the Russians 
with the land approaches on Constantinople. 

232 



THE SOLIDARITY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 

The whole Turkish Empire would be destroyed 
and dismembered and the Turks ejected from 
Europe. The Greeks unquestionably expected 
to receive Saloniki, the greater part of Thrace, and 
perhaps the Ionian Isles. The French had been 
promised Syria; Arabia had already been made 
independent; Armenia was to become an au- 
tonomous state. Russia was meant to receive 
Constantinople and the control of the straits. 
The Turk should hide his diminished head in 
Anatolia, the eastern portion of which would also 
be sacrificed to the Russians. 

Such a rearrangement and reconstruction of 
Europe, such provisions for the safety of democ- 
racy, the peoples of the Central Empires no 
doubt regarded as tantamount to the extinction 
of their political and international independence, 
to the dissolution of the German, Austrian, and 
Turkish Empires. The mere fact that a terri- 
tory would be left in northern Europe called 
Germany, shorn of all its defenses, and a small 
area still to be called Austria, and another bear- 
ing the name Hungary, both robbed of their 
military defenses and their commercial ap- 
proaches to the world's highways, did not conceal 
from them that the Allies planned to accomplish 
what they had always feared most. 

There was little chance that the people of the 
Central Empires would agree with the Right Hon- 
orable Mr. Masterman, member of the British 
Cabinet, that these terms erred too much in 
their favor. It was not likely that the solidarity 
of the Central Empires during and after the war 

233 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

was to be shaken and a movement there created 
in favor of such a diplomatic and political pro- 
gram as this. Far from its being probable that 
the Allies could expect internal aid in the Cen- 
tral Empires for their own conquest and sub- 
jection, the war was reducing, if not entirely 
demolishing, the old political, racial, and his- 
torical jealousies and traditions. It was uniting 
as never before the people of Austria and Hun- 
gary, welding them into a single unit, making 
them aware as never before of common interests 
and common aims. The German Empire, long 
regarded by considerable sections of the German 
people as an international expedient by no means 
desirable, was fast becoming the bulwark of 
literal German independence, and the hetero- 
geneous conglomerate of governments and peoples 
called Austria-Hungary was beginning to show 
something of the solidarity and common action 
to be expected of a state whose people regard its 
continued existence as a matter of course. It is 
unfortunately true that those same considera- 
tions which proved the necessity to the Allies 
for these objectives demonstrated to the people 
of the Central Empires the impossibility of such 
concessions. 



XVII 

FAILURE ON THE WEST FRONT 

1IKE victory, success and failure are not 
-* positive but relative terms, and depend, 
not upon what is achieved, but upon its relation 
to what was expected. The gaining of ground, 
the performance of brilliant exploits, do not mean 
victory; they must produce results of importance 
in relation to the objectives of the war. The 
mere fact, therefore, that the Allies resisted Ger- 
man attacks in the west and occupied consider- 
able areas of ground did not necessarily prove that 
they were winning. The capture of a few miles 
of front a few miles deep, or even as at Cambrai 
several square miles of territory, involved in- 
convenience to the Germans rather than the dan- 
ger of defeat in the war. Not even the capture 
of a whole section of the German army, causing 
an entire shift of the German line and the death 
of perhaps hundreds of thousands of men, would 
necessarily be victory. No, victory must mean 
not only the defeat of the German army, but the 
evacuation as well of France, Belgium, and 
Alsace-Lorraine. Hundreds of successful as- 
saults and raids, any number of tank expeditions, 

16 235 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

the killing of any number of Germans would 
still be failure unless they resulted in the driving 
of the German army out of conquered territory. 
This was the true objective of the campaigns on 
the West Front,because the Allies early concluded 
that the war could end only after the transfer 
of the offensive position from Germany to France. 

Moreover, they concluded, the war must end 
with the crushing of the German army rather 
than with its defeat. The necessary objective 
was the weakening of a Germany already too 
strong, the breaking up of a German military 
machine already too powerful, the decentraliza- 
tion of an administrative machinery already too 
capable for the peace and safety of Europe. 
The stronger position in the hands of the weaker 
country, the equalizing of the military equation 
by robbing Germany of part of her striking force, 
were necessary conditions of real victory in Eu- 
rope. Naturally, they were not to be secured by 
negotiations around a table. Inasmuch as the 
war had made it impossible to trust the Ger- 
mans not to use a power already in their hands, 
it must be taken from them. 

If Germany was thus to be beaten, it seemed to 
the Allies easiest to do it in France. After the 
first few weeks of the war the experts judged that 
a trench line was inevitable anywhere, that it 
would not improbably be everywhere as difficult 
of assault as the trench line in France and not 
improbably more so, in case it should be drawn 
through a country possessed of natural advan- 
tages for the defense. In France the two armies 

236 



FAILURE ON THE WEST FRONT 

were compelled to create their trenches under 
conditions substantially similar, which conferred 
here a slight advantage on the Germans and 
there a similar advantage on the Allies, but 
which gave neither so striking a superiority as 
the mountain positions of Italy bestowed upon 
the Austrians. Then, too, if the French and 
British were to bear the burden of the war it 
could be done with a maximum of ease and a 
minimum of cost in France. The armies would 
be nearest to their bases of supplies; the rail- 
road lines were already laid to the front; the 
British had only the Channel to cross, a factor of 
importance where food, coal, munitions, and 
everything else must be transported. The short 
haul for the railroads was also of consequence in 
a war where the strain upon transportation was 
sure to be great and the wear and tear likely to 
require the periodic replacement of the equip- 
ment. Fighting the war in France would pre- 
vent waste of time and material in building a new 
plant elsewhere and would utilize to the maxi- 
mum the preparations which the French had 
already made. 

Nor was it to be forgotten that after the loss 
of northern France in the first weeks of the war 
the British and French people were scarcely 
likely to tolerate a war not conducted for the 
liberation of France itself. A purely defensive 
campaign in France and an offensive campaign 
elsewhere would hardly commend itself to the two 
nations, and, in the first year of the war, the dif- 
ficulty in England was rather that of stimulating 

237 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

public interest to prosecute the war to the maxi- 
mum rather than a utilization of strength al- 
ready exerted. It is a simple matter for those 
who sit at desks to lay down objectives for great 
wars involving immense effort on the part of 
millions of men. They only too easily forget 
that the men who fight must themselves attach 
some value to the objectives and that it is there- 
fore not always within the control of leaders to 
choose those which may be from a military point 
of view most desirable. Both for the French 
and the English people the objective of the war 
became necessarily the one to which both at- 
tached the most importance, and for that public 
opinion demanded that the war should be fought 
and to that end the campaign directed. Why 
should they shed their blood in the Trentino 
or at Saloniki, before Constantinople or on the 
Danube, when the Germans were committing 
unmentionable atrocities on the plains of France? 
Great bodies of men are not moved by logic nor 
yet stirred by distant objectives, which they but 
dimly comprehend and whose relation to the task 
upon which they have set their hearts is not at all 
clear. 

There were, again, strong doubts of the ex- 
pediency of an offensive against Austria. It was 
probable that an army adequate for such an as- 
sault could not be spared from the army of defense 
in France without seriously increasing the danger 
of a German victory there. Primarily, however, 
it was inexpedient because the direction of the 
main assault against Austria-Hungary and the 

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THE WEST FRONT, MARCH 1918 



FAILURE ON THE WEST FRONT 

Balkans would be the best method to strengthen 
their alliance with Germany, and one of the 
principal hopes entertained at the beginning of 
the war in London and Paris was that it might 
be brought to an end by detaching Austria- 
Hungary and the Balkans from Germany. Cer- 
tainly victory might be made thorough and com- 
plete by detaching them from the alliance. The 
war was to be directed against Germany. The 
diplomatists should ami thoroughly to convince 
all of Germany's allies that it was directed in no 
sense against them. They were involved be- 
cause they had allied themselves with her and 
that alliance, they were told, might cost them 
dear. If they should desert it, their reward 
would be equally striking. If the war, therefore, 
was to be fought primarily against the German 
army it must be fought in France. 

The Allies had also declared with vehemence 
that the war was defensive, fought for the libera- 
tion of France and England from the German 
menace. How could they convincingly campaign 
in the Balkans or along the Black Sea, at Con- 
stantinople or in Mesopotamia, deliver in any 
one of those places the main assault, and main- 
tain, with the expectation of carrying conviction, 
that the war was purely defensive? Would not 
those very campaigns prove to Germany's allies 
that the war was offensive, intended for con- 
quest, and meant primarily to open the Black 
Sea and to dominate the Balkans? If the argu- 
ment of a defensive war was to stand, the true 
campaign lay in France. 

239 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

But the decision to conduct the main opera- 
tions in the west involved necessarily a frontal 
attack upon the German trench line, whose left 
rested upon the mountains and whose right rested 
upon the sea, a position which could not be out- 
flanked, and which must be taken by frontal as- 
sault upon German dispositions expressly chosen 
because of their assumed effectiveness against 
precisely such a type of attack. It was to be, 
moreover, an offensive undertaken against an 
army expressly created to defeat without dif- 
ficulty that particular sort of blow from the very 
force which must deliver it. The Germans had 
spent an infinitude of time and of money in ac- 
quiring information about the potential resources 
of the Allies which would make their calculations 
in regard to the army needed in the first two 
years infallible. The advantage was already 
seen to rest entirely with the defense and to be 
against the offense in the ratio of about six to 
one. The campaign in France was, therefore, 
an operation as difficult for the Allies as possible. 

It involved a sort of warfare in which the ex- 
perience of the German army counted most and 
the inexperience, the comparative disorganiza- 
tion, and the lack of correlation of the Allies 
created the maximum difficulties and disadvan- 
tages. The degree of co-ordination required be- 
tween the artillery and the infantry in the de- 
livery of an assault was not at first understood 
and was certainly not possessed by the Allied 
forces. Only painful experiences and unexpected 
disasters made clear to them the requirements. 

240 



FAILURE ON THE WEST FRONT 

Moreover, an assault necessitated an artillery 
preparation which could be adequate only after 
the discharge of an amount of explosives not at 
first dreamed of. In some of the first offensives 
undertaken by the British and French, the sup- 
ply of ammunition supposed to be adequate for 
several days' assault was discharged in a few 
hours. The extent of economic preparation re- 
quired of both nations became at once greater 
than the existing economic fabric was able to 
exert. When these difficulties had been sur- 
mounted it still remained evident that, although 
the Allies might penetrate the German trenches 
for a short distance at almost any time they 
chose, in almost any part of the line, the gain 
would always be small, because the infantry 
could hold a trench permanently only when 
covered effectively by their own artillery, and 
because the heavy artillery could not be moved 
forward over rough ground at any such speed as 
the infantry themselves could advance. To gain 
a few hundred yards was easy; to go forward a 
mile was very difficult; to hold a gain of several 
miles was almost insuperable, if the Germans 
attempted stout resistance. 

To understand why the Allies undertook and 
maintained an offensive against such apparent 
odds we must remember the optimism of the 
first years and the expectation of a prompt vic- 
tory over Germany won by forces not military. 
There seem to have been few in France and 
England who did not believe that economic ex- 
haustion would reach such a point in Germany 

241 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

within a relatively few months — always a few 
months in advance — that she would be com- 
pelled to surrender. The outbreak of a demo- 
cratic revolt which would paralyze the German 
defense was predicted again and again for a 
period always a few weeks in advance. Few 
could believe that the German people had really 
willed the war, were not hoodwinked and de- 
ceived by the Kaiser, and that they would not 
suddenly awaken to the deception. Immense 
confidence, too, was placed in the original calcu- 
lations of the General Staff. It was thought 
that Germany could not possess sufficient troops 
to conduct a war simultaneously on both fronts; 
effective defense must be impossible on one front, 
if not on both. The majority, too, believed that 
the numerical superiority of the Allies made 
mathematically certain the gradual attrition of 
the German army to a point where adequate re- 
sistance would become impossible. Hard, slow 
progress was, therefore, to be expected for a while, 
heartbreaking campaigns against stout resist- 
ance, and then a grand breaking through the 
lines and the evacuation of the whole district. 
The Allies were utterly unable to believe that the 
entire strength of France and Great Britain was 
being met by the Germans with anything less 
than the major part of their military strength. 
What now has been the result? Of this there 
was and is no doubt — it is failure. It would be 
idle to claim that the Allies did not take terri- 
tory, that brilliant exploits were not performed, 
that crushing defeats were not inflicted upon the 

m 



FAILURE ON THE WEST FRONT 

German army, which prevented it from obtaining 
this or that immediate objective; but the total 
result was none the less — failure. The objective 
of the Allies was to defeat the whole German 
army in such manner as to break its strength 
and cause it to evacuate France, Belgium, and 
Alsace-Lorraine. They expected, in addition, to 
deliver in France so serious an assault that an 
adequate offensive would be impossible for Ger- 
many in other fields. None of these objectives 
were attained. No one can read the history of 
the war and still believe that the Germans were 
unable to campaign simultaneously on two fronts 
with effect. It is entirely obvious that the cal- 
culation in regard to the efficiency of the German 
army was wrong. If the Allied mathematics 
had been correct and their premises as infallible 
as they believed them, the result would have 
been as conclusive as they expected it to be. 
The most evident error lay in the belief about 
the rapidity with which the Germans were being 
killed, but the most serious was the supposition 
that an adequate war in France could protect 
the Allies on all other fronts. The one answer 
to the German campaigns against Russia, Ser- 
bia, Rumania, and Italy was a still greater offen- 
sive on the West Front. In each case failure 
was immediate, complete. The definitive char- 
acter of the German victory over the Russian, 
Serbian, and Rumanian armies has scarcely been 
surpassed in history, and the presence of French 
and British armies in Italy to-day is the admission 
by the Allies of the erroneous character of their 

243 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

previous strategy. They are already fighting 
in Italy to save the trench line in France. 

The expediency of the continuation of the 
offensive on the West Front was also to be de- 
termined by the cost of those achievements to 
the Allies rather than by their cost to the Ger- 
mans. Was the progress made toward the 
general objective of the war worth the price 
which it was necessary for the Allies to pay for 
it? How far did such a prodigal expenditure of 
material and such a sacrifice of men carry the 
Allies in three years and a half toward the ex- 
pulsion of the Germans from France, Belgium, 
and Alsace-Lorraine? Could the Allies afford to 
buy the rest of the territory at the same price? 
If they must consume a proportionate amount of 
time in expelling the Germans from the rest of 
the occupied territory, how long would it take, 
assuming that the Germans continued to resist? 
Could the Allies themselves maintain the war 
as long without a degree of exhaustion which 
would in itself make victory worthless? It can- 
not be too often said that victory is relative and 
not positive, won when the objectives are ob- 
tained, lost when they are still to be achieved. 

Suppose now that the Allies did continue the 
war on the West Front in the manner in which 
they had been fighting, that they did succeed in 
expelling the Germans from France, Belgium, 
and Alsace-Lorraine and could afford to pay 
the price, could they have thus won the war? 
The answer depends entirely on the sort of 
victory they were determined to have. Un- 

244 



FAILURE ON THE WEST FRONT 

fortunately, the conclusive character of that 
achievement was certain to be determined not 
by the value of the West Front to the Allies 
themselves in the future, but by its value to 
the Germans during the war. Could Germany 
lose the war on the West Front and not be de- 
feated? It seemed a strange but important 
question. Naturally, the assumption upon which 
the Allies had fought with such pertinacity was 
that their victory in France would win the war, 
because a defeat in the west would be so seri- 
ous for the Germans. But the latter had already 
concluded that it was not as important for them 
to win in the west as for the Allies. To them, 
the value of the West Front was the corollary 
of the fact that their objectives lay primarily in * 
the east, in the creation of the Pan-Germanic 
Confederation, in the domination of Austria- 
Hungary, the Balkans, Turkey, and Asia Minor, 
and, if possible, the economic conquest of Russia. 
None of these were primarily to be achieved on 
the West Front nor necessarily to be lost there. 
So long as the possession of France was not as 
important to the Germans as to the Allies, its 
loss would, therefore, not be as vital to them as 
it would to the Allies. The price paid for it, 
therefore, would be unequal. If for the Allies 
its purchase was a necessary preliminary to a 
just peace, it was for the Germans merely a 
military advantage which could be sacrificed 
without losing the main objective of the war. 
For such losses the Germans could compensate 
themselves elsewhere; the Allies could not. The 

245 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

offensive position in the west was vital to the 
latter because upon its possession depended the 
adequacy of their future defense. It was de- 
sirable for the former because conclusive of a 
domination of Europe dependent upon other 
strategic, economic, and political factors. The 
expulsion of the Germans from France, Belgium, 
and Alsace-Lorraine was, therefore, not likely 
to win victory for the Allies as they had first 
defined it. Only on one supposition could vic- 
tory in the west be final — the complete destruc- 
tion and capitulation of the German army. 

The conclusive character and importance of 
victory on the West Front for the Allies was 
also to be determined by its price to them. It 
must not involve the creation of an amount of 
material greater than the productive capacity 
of Great Britain, France, and the United States 
could manufacture without too great a strain. 
It must not involve the sacrifice of men to a 
degree which would seriously weaken their future 
economic power. It must not involve an ex- 
penditure of effort so great as to leave them 
unable to utilize the victory after it was won. 
Therefore, although any victory on the West 
Front might win the immediate objective of the 
war so far as France and Belgium were concerned, 
nothing short of the destruction of the entire 
German army could end the war as a whole in 
favor of the Allies. And it must find the Allied 
armies still strong enough to undertake without 
exhaustion an invasion of Germany and the 
capture of Berlin. It was not to be forgotten 

246 



FAILURE ON THE WEST FRONT 

that Italy, Russia, Greece, Japan, and other 
nations had been enlisted among the Allies, all 
of whom had received diplomatic promises of 
territory to be gained at the end of the war. A 
victory on the West Front alone would not of 
itself win anything for the minor members of 
the Allied coalition. Even for France and 
Great Britain it could be final only under certain 
conditions. 

As months became years, the conviction stead- 
ily grew in many quarters that the original 
strategic conception of the war in the west had 
been the result of error after error in calcula- 
tions, and that its consequences were the post- 
ponement of victory, if not the risk of the loss 
of the war. 



XVIII 

CARDINAL MILITARY ERRORS 

IT is easy to criticize and prophesy after the 
event, simple to indicate each fallacy and 
demonstrate errors in calculation. None the 
less, it is important to enumerate what seem 
to be the reasons for the critical military situ- 
ation in which the Allies found themselves at 
the beginning of 1918. Fundamentally, the 
difficulty was due as much to the theory of vic- 
tory on the West Front as to any single calcu- 
lation, and to the fact that the original strategy 
of the Allies was opposed to the first German 
strategy of victory. This did lay immense stress 
upon the victory in France, but was dictated by 
a situation which concerned in the main an at- 
tack by France and Russia only, when a British 
army was not thought conceivably effective, 
and the general diplomatic success of the Allies 
in isolating Germany was discounted. That the 
events during the war radically altered the prob- 
lem of victory, the Germans promptly decided, 
but the Allies did not change their strategy to 
meet the newer conditions and the German 
strategy which was evolved from them. 

248 



CARDINAL MILITARY ERRORS 

There was nothing in the logic of victory in 
France to meet the new German strategy in- 
tended to clear the way for a crushing assault 
upon the French rear, nothing, indeed, in the gen- 
eral conduct of the war which assumed that an 
attack upon the rear of the trench line was pos- 
sible. Still less did the conduct of the war on 
the West Front deal with the German strategy 
of defeat, with the German economic defensive, 
with the Russian Revolution, with the disaster 
in Italy. True, the importance of the possession 
of France, Belgium, and Alsace-Lorraine to the 
Allies was not less in 1917 after the Russian 
Revolution had taken place, but greater. At 
the same time, the military problem of attaining 
them by a frontal attack had not altered and 
the cost of such an assault had become neces- 
sarily greater. Since the collapse of the Russian 
army, no simultaneous offensive on both fronts 
was possible, and the German victories in the 
east, the collapse of Serbia, Rumania, and Rus- 
sia, made possible a concentration of the German 
army in the west which vastly increased the 
price the Allies would have to pay for a victory 
there. Indeed, the original price was calculated 
upon the reduction of the size of the German 
army of defense, by their need to hold the Rus- 
sians in check in Poland, by the expected extent 
of attrition, and by the need of defense against 
Italy. Though all of these factors, whose im- 
portance few will question, were removed seri- 
atim from the equation, the Allies still insisted 
that the war must proceed on the West Front, 

249 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

that victory could be won there, and could not 
be won elsewhere. Yet it should have been 
obvious that the safety of the offensive concen- 
trated on the West Front depended upon the 
Italian army which was guarding its rear in 
Switzerland and in Italy itself. 

It seems possible, therefore, to maintain that 
the Allied defense was still primarily concerned, 
until direct assistance was sent to Italy in No- 
vember, 1917, with the first German notion of 
victory, and not with the second German strat- 
egy, and continued to oppose a strategy, there- 
fore, which the Germans themselves abandoned 
in the second year of the war. It did not provide 
adequate opposition to the new German attack 
at those very points where the danger was great- 
est — Serbia, Rumania, Poland, and Italy. It 
left open the road for the execution of the real 
German offensive by which they expected to 
win the war. It was a cardinal error of the 
first dimension. Moreover, the continued prose- 
cution of the offensive in France and the nec- 
essary inactivity elsewhere actually assisted the 
Germans in their execution of their strategy of 
defeat, their economic defensive, and in their 
conquest of the Russian Revolution. No doubt 
such wisdom after the event is cheap, but, if it 
be wisdom even after the event, it is important 
to remember. 

The participation of Russia in the war in- 
volved difficulties and problems long before 
seen by the Germans, and which it seems in- 
credible that the Allies and the Russians them- 

250 



CARDINAL MILITARY ERRORS 

selves should not have better understood. The 
vast man power of Russia available for the ranks 
seems to have led the Allies to conclude that the 
Russian army in this war, like the Russian armies 
in the past, might be maintained without limit 
of size, whatever its mortality. The Germans 
more correctly apprehended the situation, for 
they held that the proper size of an army under 
the new conditions would depend not upon the 
amount of rough material available for privates, 
but upon the educated men available for offi- 
cers. The literate class in Russia was small in 
proportion to the size of its population and, 
therefore, they concluded that the number of 
Russian armies which could be put in the field, 
or better, the number of times the army could 
be reorganized and put back into the field after 
decimation or defeat, would be limited to the 
number of times the corps of officers could be 
replaced. It would not be established by the 
size of the population. 

It became clear in the first months that the 
efficiency of an army, however large, depended 
in this war upon the size and effectiveness of its 
artillery, and upon the extent and adequacy of 
the economic fabric behind it. There was ob- 
viously in Russia no industrial structure ade- 
quate to create and maintain in the field the 
necessary artillery, nor even the infantry itself. 
Supplies of food there were, but for munitions 
and uniforms, for rifles and large guns, the Rus- 
sians were entirely dependent upon the Allies 
themselves, who must manufacture for Russia. 

17 251 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

The adequacy of the Russian army would, 
therefore, be measured by the adequacy of the 
means of transportation in Russia, not neces- 
sarily to Russia, for after the material was once 
in Russian hands it must still be distributed 
and placed regularly and continuously upon the 
battle front. The difficulty of the problem of 
transportation the French, the British, and the 
Germans would solve. It would be for the Rus- 
sian administration insuperable; the railroad 
lines in Russia were not sufficiently numerous, 
nor properly located, the reserve of rolling-stock 
insufficient to meet such extraordinary demands. 
At the outset of the war the Russian army was 
without adequate equipment, some of the regi- 
ments without any arms at all. The artillery 
was entirely inadequate in number and in caliber 
to protect the infantry, and the officers who 
were to direct it were not sufficiently skilful to 
provide the protection in barrages which the 
new warfare required. The troops and officers 
were alike without adequate training in the new 
type of assault. 

Nevertheless, though all these facts were un- 
questionably known in Russia, and certainly 
must have been appreciated in London and Paris, 
before the war was many weeks old Nicholas 
campaigned brilliantly against Hindenburg in 
Poland; Brusiloff was later allowed to direct a 
great and sustained offensive in the Carpathians, 
and Nicholas was sent into Asia Minor and 
Persia against Erzerum. The first campaign 
was undoubtedly intended to decrease the press- 

252 



CARDINAL MILITARY ERRORS 

ure on the West Front. The second was to 
force the passage of the Carpathians and thus 
promote the expected dissensions in Hungary. 
The third was to seize Persia, the Bagdad 
Railroad, and, if possible, push through to Con- 
stantinople. Both of the latter involved for 
success extensive railroad facilities, which it 
should have been evident Russia could not well 
spare for such distant operations, and which 
ought to have been carefully preserved in order 
that the continuity of the offensive on the East 
Front should be assured. All of these expeditions 
destroyed privates and officers in one frightful 
welter of blood. Some regiments complained 
that they were sent into battle with nothing 
more than sticks in their hands, others with no 
artillery protection and no machine-guns. Mor- 
tality of one-half, two-thirds, and three-fourths 
of the troops engaged became common. Liter- 
ally, the Russians attempted to withstand the 
advance of the Germans with great piles of 
bodies. 

The result was the disorganization of the Rus- 
sian army from this mortality, the breakdown 
of the Russian railroad system by such unusual 
exertions, long before the Revolution was better 
than a possibility. Indeed, this method of con- 
ducting the war contributed enormously to the 
dissensions among the troops when the Rev- 
olution broke out. It is now clear after the 
event that the true value of the Russian 
army to the Allies lay in its potential aggression 
in the east. So long as it lay there in its trenches, 

253 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

capable of an assault, no great offensive could 
be launched against Italy and the French rear. 
So long as it was in existence, the new German 
strategy of victory was impossible; so long as 
it stood on the defensive, the probability that 
it could resist the Germans was great. When it 
undertook the offensive the odds against it 
became overwhelming. The gain in the east 
was not worth the risk in the west. Such offen- 
sives ought not to have been undertaken until 
proper artillery protection had been provided 
and a great reserve of officers trained. Until 
then a defensive war should have been fought. 
Meanwhile, the Trans-Siberian could have been 
strengthened; new railroads built to and through 
Scandinavia; and the supply of ammunition 
and material from the Allies outside assured 
upon which a successful offensive could have 
been based. Without such preparation a victory 
by Russia in the field was problematic, the con- 
tinuity of assault difficult to predicate, a pro- 
longed offensive or a number of assaults almost 
impossible to deliver, because the transportation 
system was incapable of maintaining a continuity 
of supply in such amounts. Defeat became, 
therefore, possible, exhaustion probable, re- 
covery from either defeat or exhaustion more than 
doubtful. The Russian armies were allowed to 
waste themselves in offensives which, even if 
successful, could not have won the war. 

If the plan was to win the war in France, it 
should have involved a careful defensive every- 
where else, that the war might not be lost every- 

254 



CARDINAL MILITARY ERRORS 

where while it was being won in France. An 
offensive in Poland would have dictated a cor- 
responding defensive movement in the west. 
The Allies, however, believed early in the war 
that the certain method of victory was a simul- 
taneous offensive on both fronts, and the number 
of men was large who thought that the reason 
they did not win the war at first resulted from 
a lack of proper synchronism of the attacks. 
That there was any doubt about victory entered 
the minds of very few. The correctness of cer- 
tain mathematical calculations about the size 
of the German army, about the number who 
could be put in the field, and the number of 
deaths in the first months of warfare in France 
was assumed. It is easy now to know that they 
were incorrect. 

The preoccupation of the Allies with the West 
Front led to the direction of only half-hearted 
offensives against Constantinople and Austria 
in the first years of the war. As since explained, 
they were intended to produce a moral rather 
than a military effect; but, while possession of 
Saloniki was obtained, Greece was not converted, 
nor an army sufficient in size for an assault upon 
Austria created there. When the invasion of 
Serbia took place in 1916, the Allied armies in 
the Balkans were not sufficiently powerful to 
save her from defeat and extermination. Still 
more extraordinary were the comments, even 
in responsible military circles, that the German 
campaign in Serbia was undertaken in despera- 
tion only and had no strategic purpose or result. 

255 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

It seems hardly possible that the danger to 
the French rear involved in the loss of Russian 
strength as early as 1915 was not realized in 
London and Paris, but no direct measures were 
undertaken which would make possible the meet- 
ing of a German attack upon Rumania at the 
time when the Allies urged that state to enter 
the war. Aid to Serbia would have required 
elaborate preparations at Saloniki or in Albania, 
the transportation of troops and material, and 
perhaps the postponement of the offensive in 
France for a year. So, too, the defense of 
Rumania required either the opening of the 
Dardanelles or effective Russian aid. The Rus- 
sian army was incapable of rendering the latter 
and the Allies made no effort by adequate over- 
land operations to open the Dardanelles. Ru- 
mania, no doubt, was brought into the war to 
replace, strengthen, and assist Russia, was in- 
tended to increase the potential aggression 
against Germany in the east. As a potential 
force, she was most valuable and would have 
required the Germans to lengthen their lines 
materially and to hold them with an adequate 
force. This would have placed a very real burden 
upon them, would have occupied a large body of 
men, precisely as long as the Rumanian army 
remained undefeated. 

But this strong position was sacrificed when the 
Rumanians were allowed to undertake a great 
offensive against Transylvania. It at once coun- 
tenanced charges of their ulterior motives in en- 
tering the war and assured Germany of the loyal 

256 



CARDINAL MILITARY ERRORS 

adhesion of the Hungarian and Balkan peoples. 
It exposed the Rumanian army itself, never any 
too good, to a crushing defeat. Had the latter 
stayed in the mountains it might be still resisting 
the German attack with good effect. Of its own 
volition — and the Allies did not refuse assent — 
it crossed the Hungarian frontier and put its 
head into the lion's mouth. No such campaign 
could have been successful without Russian sup- 
port of the first quality to protect the rear and 
without Allied assistance in the Balkans to pre- 
vent Bulgaria from crossing the Danube, as 
Mackensen eventually did, to strike the Ru- 
manian army in flank and rear. It was a sort 
of campaign advisable only in the last years, or 
last months even, of a successful war undertaken 
against a foe already demoralized and retreating, 
not against a foe just freed in the northeast from 
a large burden he had hitherto been compelled 
to carry. Once again no Allied aid was given 
and none adequate was prepared. Still less did 
the Allies prevent the undertaking of the cam- 
paign itself. So far as is known they urged and 
requested it. Once again it is demonstrated that 
no adequate appreciation existed then in Allied 
councils that the war could be lost in the east; 
that defeat in the east could rob victory in the 
west for the Allies of half its triumph, while 
victory in the east for the Germans would rob 
defeat for them in the west of most of its terrors. 
The defeat of Rumania in the winter of 1916 
enabled the German offensive to accomplish an- 
other significant step in its approach on France. 

257 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

The strategy of defeat also made excellent prog- 
ress. The fields of Rumania helped the economic 
defensive wonderfully. The victory made com- 
munication simple and secure with Turkey and 
Bulgaria, frustrated Allied diplomacy in the 
Balkans, held Greece faithful, and made improb- 
able any dissensions in Hungary and Austria. 

In the spring of 1917, with so much already 
lost in the east, with the position in the west 
now approachable by additional German troops 
freed by the Russian Revolution, the Italians 
began a campaign against Trieste. It was easily 
the worst military blunder of the war. It jeop- 
ardized at once the whole line in France. While 
its true secret, like the campaign of the Ruman- 
ians against Transylvania, may never be known 
within our own lifetime, no sign was certainly 
made in London or Paris of dissent or disapproval. 
Indeed, the press of both countries trumpeted 
forth the first advances of the Rumanian and 
Italian armies as great Allied victories, under- 
taken in entire accordance with French and 
British plans for the overwhelming of the Hun. 
Certainly, something of the onus of these mili- 
tary blunders must eventually fall upon the 
British and the French. 

The position in which the Italians voluntarily 
placed themselves could scarcely have been more 
dangerous. The valley of the Po was every- 
where dominated along its northern front by 
mountain positions of vast strength which con- 
trolled the historic roads up and down the Po 
between France and Austria, used so often by 

258 



CARDINAL MILITARY ERRORS 

military campaigns in the past. Through the 
Trentino ran a road over the Brenner Pass into 
the valley of the River Inn which led down upon 
Vienna. Another road ran up upon Vienna from 
eastern Italy and the Isonzo through the moun- 
tains. Between the two were numerous passes 
and shorter roads which connected with one or 
the other. In 1866, when the major part of the 
valley of the Po was ceded to the new kingdom 
of Italy, the Austrians insisted upon retaining the 
most important of the mountain fastnesses. The 
offensive position remained in their hands and 
the defensive position — a very bad defensive at 
that — was given to the Italians. 

The two military posts of greatest importance 
were the Trentino, which projected like a triangle 
into the very heart of the Po itself and menaced 
the whole of Italy, and the boundary between 
Italy and Austria, the Isonzo, which could be 
attacked on the rear and its communications cut 
by an army advancing into the plains from the 
Trentino. Similarly an Italian army, campaign- 
ing against the Trentino, exposed its flanks to the 
Austrian army operating on the Isonzo. The 
Italian offensive against the latter line was par- 
ticularly weak because outflanked by the Julian 
Alps and exposed in the rear to the Trentino. A 
defeat before Trieste involved of necessity a long 
retreat through the plains, with the flank of the 
army always exposed to attack from successive 
mountain positions in the Alps to the north until 
the line of the Adige was reached. A defeat on 
the Isonzo would imperil at once the whole 

259 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

Italian army and make possible its annihilation. 
A simultaneous campaign by the Austro-Ger- 
mans from the Isonzo and Trentino might cut 
the Italian army in two and crush its parts 
separately. 

As the military weakness of the position was 
well known to the Italians, the reasons for under- 
taking the campaign seem to have been diplo- 
matic and political. The objective of Italy in 
entering the war was ostensibly the recovery of 
Italia Irredenta, of the lands, Italian in speech 
and race, which still remained under Austrian 
rule. The great popular movement for their 
recovery swept the Government into the war. 
The Ministry was apprehensive; the pro-German 
party was large and active. In order to keep 
the people quiet and satisfied with the war and 
the sacrifices it demanded it became essential to 
provide them with some success in the field, to 
undertake with the army one of the objectives 
to which the people themselves attached great 
importance. It was, moreover, essential that 
physical possession of Trieste should be assured 
before the war ended. Its value to Austria as a 
commercial highway to the ocean was so great 
that it was entirely unlikely that the Austrians 
would yield its possession to mere diplomatic 
pressure. It must be taken in advance. It 
was easier to attack Trieste where the co-opera- 
tion of the navy was possible and where the 
British ships could bring direct munitions, coal, 
and supplies. 

The campaign required for success an adequate 

260 



CARDINAL MILITARY ERRORS 

force in men for such an offensive, an adequate 
amount of artillery and ammunition, with coal, 
munitions, food in adequate amounts. There 
was as well the ability of the French and British 
to retain the Germans on the West Front and pre- 
vent their use of the mountain positions against 
the Italians, to say nothing of the assumption 
that the Italians would themselves be able to 
hold the Trentino, the Julian, and the Carnic 
Alps as well as the lines in front of Trieste. Un- 
fortunately none of these conditions could be ful- 
filled. The Italians were not well supplied with 
adequate artillery, with a sufficient amount of 
munitions or coal, and the submarine successes 
made it difficult for Great Britain to spare from 
the Channel and the Atlantic the ships necessary 
to provide a continuous stream of supplies 
through the Mediterranean. There was no cer- 
tainty whatever that the submarine would not 
prevent the arrival of supplies without which the 
operation must fail. Moreover, the Russian 
army had already collapsed; Serbia and Rumania 
had been annihilated; and the probability was 
less than ever that the Germans could be so oc- 
cupied on the West Front as to be unable to 
attempt a dangerous offensive from the moun- 
tain positions against the Italians. Nor could 
direct aid be sent from France without giving 
up the offensive there. Both the French and the 
British declined to consider this for a moment. 
It would seem as if no campaign could have been 
projected for which so many unfavorable cir- 
cumstances and possibilities existed. 

261 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

Nevertheless, the Italian army proceeded to 
campaign against Trieste, worked itself by im- 
mense sacrifices into a most vulnerable position 
at a time when the offensive in France and the 
work of the submarine did interfere with the 
continuity of the supply of munitions and coal 
from Great Britain, and when the Germans were 
able to throw against them a force greater than 
ever before. The explanations of the disaster, 
given at the moment when the news had first 
to be broken to an anxious world, told of an 
Italian artillery not large enough in caliber nor 
well enough provided with ammunition to meet 
the array of large guns the Austro-Germans 
massed against it. "While it is possible that the 
Allies preferred to shoulder the blame upon the 
lack of material rather than to admit to their 
people that the Italian army had been literally 
beaten, the explanation threw a lurid suspicion 
upon the intelligence of the General Staff which 
attempted an offensive without adequate prepa- 
rations. Something must also be ascribed to the 
Allied mathematics which taught that so many 
Germans were already killed in France that they 
could not be available for an offensive in Italy. 
Unfortunately, the Germans arrived, numerous 
and vigorous, and demonstrated the fallacy of 
the calculations that they ought to have been 
dead. The dilemma was most unfortunate; 
every explanation involved reflections upon the 
foresight, the information, the judgment, the 
bravery, or the loyalty of the Italians and to 
some extent upon the French and British states- 

262 



CARDINAL MILITARY ERRORS 

men. If the campaign itself was expedient, it 
must fail without effective preparations. If the 
dispositions were correct, the fault must lie with 
the Italian army. But in view of the well-known 
vulnerability of the Italian position, it is dif- 
ficult to see how any campaign could have suc- 
ceeded, except on the supposition that resist- 
ance would be negligible. 

In any case the result was a crushing defeat of 
the Italians on the Isonzo in October, 1917. 
The Germans and Austrians made the most of the 
vulnerable position in which the Italians had 
obligingly placed themselves and forced them to 
evacuate the whole line at a loss of twenty-five 
hundred guns, nearly a quarter of a million pris- 
oners, and no one knows how many dead. To 
be sure, a most difficult retreat was well con- 
ducted ; the morale of the Italian army remained 
good; the French and British assistance was 
promptly started and arrived after no undue de- 
lay; but the defense of the Piave, next attempted, 
also involved a most dangerous operation. The 
Italians and their allies held a right angle, the 
corner and the upper side of which were very 
weak, being practically controlled by immensely 
strong mountain positions already in the hands 
of the Austrians, and with the rear and com- 
munications menaced by the Trentino. Liter- 
ally the whole line had to be held impregnable. 
A defeat on any part of it, especially along the 
Trentino, would be fatal to the whole Allied 
forces and involve a catastrophe of the first 
dimensions. Indeed, the war might be lost in 

263 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

Italy on the Piave; unfortunately, it could 
scarcely be won there, since the Allies had al- 
ready suffered such extremely serious losses of 
strategic positions elsewhere. Until possession 
of Italy could be recovered, the rear of the trench 
line in France was in vital danger and the great 
German blow through Switzerland became pos- 
sible. Of course the Germans had much to do 
before they could attempt that final campaign. 
Time, men, munitions, would be required in 
immense amounts, but there could be no doubt 
that the German High Command had calculated 
upon all of that. If they won the valley of the 
Po, the issue of the war itself would be in grave 
doubt. Even the advent of the United States 
might not suffice to save it. Not since the battle 
of the Marne had the Allied line been in as great 
danger as on the Piave in November and De- 
cember, 1917. No mere postponement of vic- 
tory was here involved, but the danger of literal 
defeat which might involve the loss of Belgian 
neutrality and of Alsace-Lorraine. For it had 
already become evident that the most the Ger- 
mans had left to win in Europe was the main- 
tenance of their offensive position in the west and 
the foothold upon the Channel which Belgium 
would afford. 



BOOK III 
THE WINNING OF THE; WAR 



XIX 

THE CERTAINTY OF VICTORY 

NO prophecies and calculations about the war 
have proved more fallible than those so 
authoritatively and frequently delivered since 
its outbreak upon the certainty of victory. It 
is now possible, in light of the analysis attempted 
in the foregoing chapters, to view the problem 
of winning the war in its relation to the various 
methods so confidently announced by official 
spokesmen as certain of success. To the incor- 
rectness of these assumptions the postponement 
of Allied victory has been largely due. There 
was the original error that the war could be won 
by the financial and credit structure of the 
Allies. There was the second fallacy that the 
sea power and the blockade alone would starve 
Germany to terms in a few months. The con- 
tinuation of the war promptly exposed both. 
There was then the notion that the resources of 
the Allies could be computed by adding the es- 
timates of total population, the numbers of fac- 
tories and mines, and the idea that because the 
material was in existence it was necessarily avail- 
able on the battle-field. Cousin to this was the 

IS 267 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

assumption in regard to the insufficiency of Ger- 
man man power to conduct an effective defense 
in the west and an offense at the same time else- 
where. To these were naturally added the belief 
that the attrition of the German army was pro- 
ceeding at an excessive rate. Again and again 
we were assured that the amount of ammunition 
and material required to prosecute the war had 
been scientifically estimated. Again and again 
we have found that the ratio already determined 
was incorrect. In all these estimates there was 
indeed everything except certainty. By none of 
them could victory be won. 

Indeed, the conspicuous failure to achieve vic- 
tory by their means, the growing fear that a 
maximum military victory in Europe for the Al- 
lies may not be possible on the old scale and in 
the old way, has led many competent observers 
of the first rank to conclude that victory can be 
indubitable only if the Allies can obtain the aid 
and co-operation of the people of the Central 
Empires themselves. "The solution of the Cen- 
tral European problem means everything for the 
Allies," said M. Cheradame in a much-discussed 
article in November, 1917. 1 "So long as it 
remains unsolved, victory will be out of reach. 
On the other hand, when this one point has been 
settled all the other special war aims of each of 
the Allies can be fulfilled with ease. . . . Either 
the Allies will win victory through the destruc- 
tion of Pan-Germany or else the Germans, thanks 
to Pan-Germany and its economic and military 

1 Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 120, No. 5, p. 684. 
268 



THE CERTAINTY OF VICTORY 

advantages, will reduce all of Europe to sla- 
very." He stated positively that authorities no 
less well known than Leger, Denis, Haumant, 
Gauvain, Seton-Watson, Wickham Steed, and 
Sir Arthur Evans agreed with him that the cer- 
tainty of victory could only be achieved in this 
way. 1 By implication these eminent authorities 
believe a military victory in Europe of sufficient 
extent impossible. 

The confidence of these gentlemen in the in- 
fallibility of this solution seems to rest upon the 
unquestioned potency of the assistance of the 
people of the Central Empires and the effect of 
democratic revolts, should they occur. It is 
vitally important, in view of the considerations 
developed about the Central Empires in previous 
chapters, for us now to discuss the relative cer- 
tainty of such assistance, its relative value, and 
its relative cogency. The vital thing, indeed, in 
all these calculations regarding the imponder- 
ables lies in the difficulty of determining that they 
may be relied upon to operate in our favor. If 
they should aid us, their efficacy will be great, 
but, unfortunately, they are not as dependable 
as they are potent. 

The previous chapters should have made evi- 
dent the very strong doubt as to the dependa- 
bility of the co-operation of any of the peoples 
of the Central Empires with the Allies for the 
achieving of the dissolution of Pan-Germany. 
But it will be well for the moment to assume the 
certainty of their co-operation and attempt to 

1 Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 120, No. 6, p. 831. 
269 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

estimate their ability to achieve their purpose. 
Unfortunately, the idea that the stimulation of 
such a revolt is a simple matter and its outbreak 
easy belies all that the Pan-Germanists them- 
selves told us before the war in regard to their 
plans for its prosecution. They were as well 
aware of this internal weakness as we can now be, 
and realized that a necessary war measure would 
be adequate provision against it. For this rea- 
son they emphasized the issue of Serbia at the 
outbreak of the war. The southern Slavs in 
Austria, whose loyalty was suspected and upon 
whose assistance M. Ch£radame is depending, are 
very hostile to Serbian plans of expansion which 
involve their annexation to Serbia. What they 
wish is not absorption into a large Slav monarchy 
in the south, but independence for themselves as 
an autonomous state of the Austrian Empire. 

But the rulers of the Central Empires cer- 
tainly did not stop here. A revolt presupposed 
men who would rise with weapons in their hands 
to fight. WTiat was simpler than to remove the 
men and the weapons? Conscription made such 
a policy easy to execute. The men of the sec- 
tions whose loyalty was in the least suspected both 
in Austria-Hungary and in Germany were drafted 
to the last man capable of the slightest military 
utility, if not into one branch of the service into 
another. The regiments were then systematic- 
ally scattered along the whole battle line, west 
and east, so that they should be mixed with 
loyal troops and unable to co-operate with one 
another. Is it possible that the eminent au- 

270 



THE CERTAINTY OF VICTORY 

thorities above enumerated are not aware that 
there is scarcely an able-bodied male left in those 
districts? Do they suppose that the women, 
children, and old men are able to conduct the 
type of revolt they desire? There, too, was an- 
other simple defensive measure : to deprive those 
districts of arms, of iron, of knives, and of all 
supplies of food not necessary for immediate 
sustenance. Without food certainly no body of 
men could be collected and kept together, and, 
therefore, no revolt would be possible. Unless 
everything we know about the intended dispo- 
sitions of the Austro-Hungarian troops is wrong, 
effective revolt in those districts was made a 
physical and material impossibility at the very 
outbreak of the war. 

How, too, are the instigators of such a revolt 
to reach the people upon whom they are to work? 
Around the Central Empires has been drawn a 
military cordon of the utmost tension. Inside 
and outside are vigilant defenders. Any such 
agents 'provocateurs must first pass the scrutiny 
of the German spy system in Allied countries, 
and, after having successfully performed the 
Herculean feat of passing the frontier, 1 will then 
have to subject themselves to the scrutiny of the 
German spies on the inside, who are not less 
numerous and ubiquitous than those on the out- 
side. There are then the military authorities, 
who are very anxious that in those districts no 
person should live unsupervised, and there are, 
in addition, the civil authorities and the ordinary 

1 M. Cheradame suggests aeroplanes. 
271 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

police. The elaborateness of this supervision we 
well know from those few prisoners who have 
managed to escape. No sufficient number of 
Allied agents could conceivably come from out- 
side and remain in those districts except at the 
cost of a degree of concealment which would al- 
most inevitably frustrate the intention of their 
mission. The military law of the Central Em- 
pires also makes the gathering of any considerable 
number of people together a criminal offense, 
and it is difficult, therefore, to imagine how under 
such circumstances a sufficient body of men 
could be instigated to a revolt, could then be 
gathered in one place, provided with weapons, 
and the outbreak occur with any prospect what- 
ever of success. Is it likely that anything could 
be done in southern Austria which a single army 
corps with machine-guns could not exterminate 
in a single day? There seems to be about such 
a revolt only one element of certainty — its 
defeat. 

Suppose, too, that the subject people, pos- 
sessed of this desire to revolt, are able to execute 
it and to bring down with a crash the Austro- 
Hungarian Empire and end the war in the inter- 
est of the Allies. Let us suppose everything 
accomplished to the maximum degree. What, 
then, have they done for themselves? Would 
they have achieved literal independence? Two 
things have been made very clear by the develop- 
ment of the nineteenth century. Political in- 
dependence must to-day have its roots in real 
economic independence. The nation which ex- 

272 



THE CERTAINTY OF VICTORY 

pects to maintain itself, free from all interna- 
tional, diplomatic, and political interference from 
other European powers must be capable of 
financing its own development. Not one of 
these assumed national states in Austria-Hun- 
gary would be for a moment able to conduct its 
own affairs without economic relations with one 
of the larger powers of a nature which would 
mortgage its whole economic fabric hopelessly 
and entirely to them. The new countries would, 
indeed, not achieve real independence. They 
would merely exchange one master for another, 
a master at a distance for one upon the spot. 
They would also acquire two bitter resident 
enemies, Germany and Austria, who, however 
weak in comparison with Great Britain, France, 
and Italy, would still remain immensely strong 
in their relation to the new Bohemia, the new 
Serbia, and the new Rumania. What would the 
political position, the diplomatic freedom, of 
such peoples be worth? Can they suppose for a 
moment that such a condition could be called 
independence or that they would be necessarily 
better off than they are now? Will they not be 
likely to see in the fate of Serbia their own future 
in case Germany and Austria should ever recover 
control? If there is a very large and well- 
informed body of opinion in the Allied states 
which espouses the views first quoted, there 
is another large and well-informed body of au- 
thorities which thus interprets the sentiments of 
the Balkan people. Between these two groups of 
authorities it is difficult to choose, and only one 

273 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

thing is certain, that one or the other of them is 
wrong. The difficulty is that we are as yet en- 
tirely unable to tell which with the slightest 
element of certainty. 

The most important objection, however, to 
this solution of the issue of the war lies in its 
inconsistency with the moral stand taken by the 
Allies upon the justifiability of the war. The 
progress, conduct, and end of the war must al- 
ways be viewed in terms of its origin. We must 
never forget that it began in aggression and was 
continued in the brutality of the strategy of 
defeat. The Allies are fighting a great crusade 
for international justice; for individual decency 
and respect; for honesty in international deal- 
ings; for the right of the individual to develop 
himself, however slowly and imperfectly; for 
the ideals of Christianity as generations have un- 
derstood them. It is no mere inarticulate striv- 
ing toward indefinite abstractions called right 
and freedom. The whole philosophy of the his- 
torical, religious, and individual development of 
Christian Europe lies behind it. For centuries 
Europe has been agreed that the great object 
of life is spiritual, but that spirituality is an 
individual attribute, to be developed by an in- 
dividual effort and initiative, difficult to attain 
by individuals in the mass, certainly never to be 
achieved by force, and perhaps not by co-opera- 
tive action. Aid to the individual from others 
in his struggle for spirituality has been found in- 
dispensable, and both Church and State have 
been able to aid and stimulate him. But he 

274 



THE CERTAINTY OF VICTORY 

must receive from both aid and not direction, 
stimulus and not control. The part to be played 
by Church and State in individual development 
should be indirect and negative rather than di- 
rect and positive. The individual must grow of 
himself, must develop himself, and can do so only 
when he is free to choose. 

The individualism championed by the Allies 
is the basis of democracy, the key to intellectual- 
ity, the heart of spirituality. It is the faith of 
Greece, the faith of the Renaissance, of the 
French Revolution, of the nineteenth century. 
German collectivism is the old conformity and 
uniformity of pagan and prehistoric man and 
looks for its precedent to Egypt, to Assyria, and 
to Rome. If our study of the history of the 
world and of civilization previous to the war, if 
the great conclusions reached by the Germans 
themselves in their own study previous to the 
war are correct, the Allies are right and the Ger- 
mans are wrong: the trend of history has been 
toward individualism and not toward collectiv- 
ism. The Allies stand upon the secure moral 
foundations of Christianity and of the course of 
civilization as the study of man has inter- 
preted it. 

We have seen the history of human civilization 
as a record of progress in society and in the 
individual, partly material, but essentially spir- 
itual. Gradually we have seen the idea formu- 
late that the development of the individual lay 
at its root, that its advance lay in his achieve- 
ment of freedom from artificial restriction by 

275 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

families, guilds, towns, kings, and churches. 
We have long taught the futility of regulation to 
establish justice and inculcate virtue. Our an- 
cestors revolted against the medieval notion of 
the imposition of truth from above and against 
the theory of the necessity of direction of daily 
life by the intelligent. For this they rejected 
both empire and Church in the sixteenth cen- 
tury; for this they fought with principalities and 
powers in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies; for this they came to America and sought 
the islands of the sea; for this they cheerfully 
endured hunger, privation, imprisonment, the 
rack, and the flaming fagots. And shall we now 
deny our glorious heritage from these martyrs 
of the past and accept from Hohenzollern, Haps- 
burg, and Ottoman the governmental theories of 
Gregory VII. and Innocent III., of Charlemagne 
and Charles V., the logic of the Inquisition, the 
statecraft of Machiavelli? The French and 
British people are mindful of Jeanne d'Arc and 
of the Spanish Armada. They cherish the mem- 
ory of the English civil wars and of the French 
Revolution. They look back with pride to the 
Rights of Man and the Citizen and to the Reform 
Act of 1832. They can never, in view of that 
heritage, deny the principle of nationality, the 
liberty of the individual, the equality of democ- 
racy, the reign of law. 

For the American people in particular the war 
is a great moral crusade, a disinterested battle for 
justice and right. The great majority are con- 
scious of but indistinct and distant ends of im- 

276 



T L HE CERTAINTY OF VICTORY 

mediate significance. That our national in- 
dependence is in reality threatened, that our 
cherished democracy is literally in danger, they 
accept because the President, in whose wisdom 
and impartiality they are coming more and more 
to possess an almost blind confidence, has assured 
them in carefully considered utterances of the 
unassailable truth of those facts. But the dem- 
onstration of that truth the majority have thus 
far been unable to undertake for themselves. 
They have been and are still moved by a righteous 
indignation and high moral anger which has in it 
no admixture whatever of baseness or selfishness. 
In its impartiality lies its strength; from its sub- 
jectivity comes its white-hot intensity; from its 
impersonality comes its conviction of justice. 
Never in human history has a great nation willed 
a war with such magnificent assurance of recti- 
tude and such profound conviction of the im- 
perative necessity of victory for the preservation 
of civilization. In generations to come the es- 
pousal of the cause of Belgium and of France by 
the American people will of itself decide the issue 
of the justifiability of the war and condemn the 
Central Powers for all time for damnable aggres- 
sion, for lust of conquest, for the commission of 
unspeakable atrocities. 

The Anglo-Saxon has professed his inward con- 
viction of divine justice, truth, and immanence 
with a shamefaced and invincible diffidence. It 
has never been our habit to wave our arms in 
public assemblies and call upon the Deity with 
vain mouthings to witness our partnership with 

277 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

Him, to profess a mystical relationship to Him, 
and claim literal guidance in statecraft and war. 
But none the less deep and abiding has been our 
consciousness of the reality of divine assistance, 
and the national determination to shape our 
policies and actions in accordance with His law. 
Our prayers have not been lacking in fervor be- 
cause we have whispered them in our closets in- 
stead of professing them before men. We have 
attained a sense of rectitude not less powerful in 
the sight of God because our conviction of our 
ability correctly to apprehend God's intention 
finds its expression with no great assurance and 
with some appreciation of the fallibility and weak- 
ness of human understanding. In all diffidence 
we believe that a Divine Providence does in some 
way aid the cause of justice, of truth, and of 
humanity. In all humility we say in our hearts 
that God fights for us and will give us the victory. 
Is it not clear that such a view of the moral 
issue of the war is utterly inconsistent with our 
ability to depend upon the assistance of the 
peoples of the Central Empires in concluding such 
a peace as will make safe democracy and civiliza- 
tion? We cannot one moment inveigh against 
the Germans as brutes, pirates, and aggressive 
enemies, accept literally the stories of atrocities 
and of submarine horrors, and in the next breath 
declare them attached to democracy and ready 
to co-operate with us in its perpetuation. The 
Allied notion of the degree of victory we require 
rests upon the culpability of the German nation 
as a whole. This notion of the peace we must 

278 



THE CERTAINTY OF VICTORY 

have and the method by which it is to be achieved 
seems to assume that the German nation pos- 
sesses an entirely opposite character. If we go 
to war with them on the ground that they are 
brutal and faithless we cannot consistently sup- 
pose that we shall win our victory with the aid 
of qualities in these very men which our own 
analysis of the moral issue has just denied them. 
In view of the attitude of the German public 
toward the Lusitania, the atrocities in Belgium, 
the looting of France, how can we maintain that 
they are a simple, kindly, and artistic nation who 
need to be rescued from the oppression of the 
Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs? 

There is no question so important as this to 
settle. The degree of victory we must have de- 
pends literally upon the trust which can be 
imposed in the German people themselves. It 
is not their strength we fear so much as their 
will to use it for objects we regard as unwar- 
rantable. It is not the strategic positions of 
which we are afraid so much as the power they 
place in the hands of men for whom treaties 
have no sanctity and the laws of war no reality. 
If they can be trusted in the future, why could 
we not trust them in the past? If they have 
proved themselves faithless in the past, how 
shall we trust them in the future? To divide 
the German people into two parts and to say 
that the Kaiser, the officials, and the military 
class are responsible for the war, guilty of its 
atrocities, and should be punished for their 
crimes; to treat the remainder of the nation as 

279 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

their unwitting or unwilling dupes — is merely to 
rephrase the problem. We must still explain 
how and why these dupes are still fighting with 
unquestionable energy in the midst of priva- 
tion to perpetuate the very oppression which we 
assume they dislike and reprobate. 

It is also idle to draw a moral line between 
Germany and her allies, to treat the latter as in- 
nocent and therefore harmless. Such a dis- 
tinction rests upon diplomatic expediency rather 
than upon evidences of moral superiority. The 
Allies are attempting to fight the war by means 
of the old formula, to conquer Germany with the 
aid of the Germans, to separate Austria from 
Hungary by the old antipathies, to paralyze their 
military efforts by internal revolt. The anxiety 
to shoulder the moral guilt upon the Germans 
grows not from a conviction of the innocence 
of their allies, but of their usefulness; not from 
a desire to acquit them, but from a deter- 
mination to stimulate them to disloyalty. To 
do this we must deny their complicity in the war. 
But again we have merely shifted our ground and 
created a new problem equally difficult to solve. 
Why have they so long remained accomplices 
after the fact, if the contrary impulses in those 
countries are as powerful as we deem them to be? 
Why did they co-operate at all? Our calculation 
is no more dependable because we have intro- 
duced two new assumptions into it. It is still to 
be solved : we are still dealing with the imponder- 
ables which are not certain. Unfortunately, we 
arrive at the dilemma that if the German people 

280 



THE CERTAINTY OF VICTORY 

are hoodwinked, they lack intelligence; that if 
the Austrians are honestly their allies, they lack 
humanity. On the contrary, if the Kaiser finds 
support in the honest conviction of the vast ma- 
jority of the German people, we may conclude 
them intelligent, but we must also admit that 
they possess a culpability for the war equal to 
his. If we suppose that the Austrians, the Hun- 
garians, and the Bulgarians co-operate only be- 
cause they must, do we not assume an ability 
of the Germans and the Austrians to exert upon 
them a forcible pressure which the war itself 
would make impossible? If they co-operate 
without compulsion, they then must also bear 
their share in the onus of guilt. 

Unfortunately, the difficulty remains exceed- 
ingly great so long as any element of uncertainty 
persists. Unless we know positively that the 
German and Austrian people are not responsible 
for the war, unless we can be definitely assured 
that the Hungarians have yielded only to com- 
pulsion, we cannot base our entire calculation in 
regard to the dispositions necessary to make us 
safe in the future upon their innocence, and as- 
sume their dependability and their honest demo- 
cratic convictions. Let him who doubts read 
something of the sermons preached by the Ger- 
man clergy during the war. Let him read the 
manifestos signed by scientists of international 
repute. Let him talk with a few Germans or 
Austrians. Let him remember that the intellect- 
ual class has been educated upon Pan-Germanist 
history, literature, and philosophy for more than 

281 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

a generation. The certainty of victory cannot be 
predicated upon by no means unassailable con- 
clusions about imponderables, themselves by 
their very nature open to a variety of interpre- 
tations. If we must depend upon the assistance 
of the Austro-Hungarians to win the war, the 
war is irrevocably lost. No certainty nor safety 
can emerge from it. It may be well for us to 
remember that the ingratitude of Austria on 
one famous occasion astonished a cynical world. 
If we premise her ingratitude and disloyalty 
to the Germans, we shall scarcely be wise to 
rely upon her gratitude and loyalty toward our- 
selves. 

Nothing could be more dangerous for the 
Allies in the future than such a victory. If we 
reorganize Europe upon the basis of a decen- 
tralization of Central Europe created by the 
people themselves, we shall then put ourselves 
irremediably into their hands. The new settle- 
ment, upon which our safety is to depend, can at 
any moment be destroyed by their will to over- 
throw it, and we shall be entirely incapable by 
diplomatic, political, or military opposition to 
prevent it. If we defeat them by the simple ex- 
pedient of stimulating disloyalty, is it not imme- 
diately obvious that we ourselves may lose our 
victory at any moment when they choose to re- 
sume loyal co-operation with one another? We 
could not more completely put ourselves into 
their hands; we could not build upon a more 
sandy formation, or erect a structure of future 
security more frail and unstable. We shall put 



THE CERTAINTY OF VICTORY 

ourselves into the hands of a people whose 
morality and trustworthiness we have seen 
hitherto every reason to doubt, whose ambitions 
we have had every reason to suspect are hostile 
to our safety, whose allegiance has apparently 
never wavered to a government we detest and 
fear. 

If such a settlement is possible, how can it con- 
ceivably be permanent? Is it not evident that 
if such were the characteristics of the people of 
the Central Empires, the war could not have 
broken out, could not have been prosecuted; 
that the danger to democracy and to civilization 
would not exist which we have so many times 
affirmed with vehemence. Such a solution de- 
nies the justifiability and expediency of the war. 
It disavows the imperative necessity of victory. 
It implies that a military victory is impossible 
and that we are reduced to compromising with 
the foe. It even proclaims our readiness to treat 
with him on the basis of his views regarding the 
justice of the outbreak of the war, the merciful 
manner in which it has been prosecuted, and the 
formal renunciation of our previous convictions 
about both. Our moral surrender will be com- 
plete; our moral defense sacrificed; our spiritual 
professions stultified. Such a victory will be a 
thousand times worse than defeat in the field. 
It will provide no guarantee whatever for the 
future which would possess the slightest validity 
beyond that which the people of the Central 
Empires themselves saw fit to recognize. Our 
security would last as long as they permitted; 

19 283 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

it would end when they chose; for it would rest 
upon factors not within our own control. If 
this be the solution of the war, defeat is certain 
and the complete domination of Europe by Ger- 
many can be only a question of time. 



XX 

DEFEAT THROUGH VICTORY 

TO those who decline to predicate the assist- 
ance of the German people or to regard their 
adoption of democracy as other than a hypo- 
critical subterfuge, who realize that the sea 
power unaided is not able to win a maximum 
victory against land pow^r, a military victory 
seems indispensable. It is of prime importance 
for us to determine as accurately as we may 
what such a victory now involves and to reach 
some conclusions in regard to its probability. 
Is it likely that the needs and objectives of the 
military campaign can be adequately enough 
foreseen to enable us to assume a sweeping mil- 
itary victory? Can we compute its cost in men 
and resources? Can we pay it? The interest 
of the United States in these issues is immediate 
because in all probability we must pay that price 
ourselves, the effort which it involves we must 
ourselves exert, and the question of whether we 
can and will make it is one to be decided calmly, 
purposefully, and with full knowledge of the con- 
sequences of the decision, of the type and extent 
of action it will involve. 

285 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

To attain the objectives announced by the 
Allies — the complete political and administrative 
reorganization of Central Europe — such a vic- 
tory must be sweeping indeed. Nothing less 
will suffice than the reconquest of all territory 
now occupied by the Germans, the invasion of 
Germany itself, the capture of Berlin, the ab- 
dication of the Kaiser, the dictation at Potsdam 
of peace on any terms the Allies can agree upon. 
The enormous extent of the territory to be re- 
conquered, the strength of its strategic defenses, 
the size and efficiency of the German army, will 
be the measure of the cost we must pay. The 
number of years necessary will depend not upon 
the force the Allies exert, but upon the German 
resistance. Double and treble the present rate 
of progress in France, the weakening of the 
German defense, and the loss of German morale 
will still make inevitable a war many years long. 
Nor must we forget that the Russians may re- 
lease their German prisoners and thus add a 
million seasoned troops to the present army. 
The Russian Revolution may also solve the Ger- 
man economic problem. The cost of victory 
will depend not upon the extent of our resources, 
but upon the efficiency of the German defense. 
If we estimate at half the expenditure of this 
last year the number of men to be sacrificed to 
buy back so much territory, the amount of am- 
munition indispensable, the amount of clothing 
to be manufactured and of food to be placed in 
the armies' mouths, the result will be staggering 
to contemplate. 

286 



DEFEAT THROUGH VICTORY 

Assuming, however, that such a victory is 
possible, it can scarcely be expedient. The old 
optimism of the first years of the war held that 
there could be no price which the Allies could 
not easily afford to pay for such a maximum 
victory. Were unlimited resources exhaustible? 
Would not a man power beyond all possible 
needs suffice? The change in the German 
strategy of victory, the adoption of the policy 
hitherto described as the strategy of defeat and 
the economic defensive have made it entirely pos- 
sible that the Allies may win a maximum victory 
in the field at the cost of all that victory has 
sought to preserve. 1 Like the fabled apples of 
antiquity, victory would turn to ashes in our 
mouths. 

There is a limit to the French and British man 
power which can be sacrificed in the fighting of 
the war without sapping the future economic 
strength of those countries to a greater degree 
than their power of recuperation can restore. 
The French are already dangerously near that 
limit, and Great Britain has certainly in the 
field the maximum of her man power. There is 
a similar limit to the productivity of the Allies. 
Already the reserve stores of coal, iron, wool, 
and other indispensable raw materials for the 
prosecution of the war have been exhausted, not 
only in the Allied countries, but throughout 
the world. The raw materials to be spent in the 

1 Such seems to be Lord Lansdowne's true opinion. M. CheVa- 
dame seems even to doubt the possibility of maximum victory in 
the field. 

287 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

further prosecution of the war must be produced 
by the Allied countries as well as manufactured 
by them. The supply certainly will not be 
without limit. For a time a country may turn 
its entire efforts to the prosecution of a war 
and may then be able to produce in quantities 
far beyond any calculation hitherto foreseen, but 
its power to produce is none the less limited. 
Men cannot work indefinitely three shifts a day. 
Nor is it possible, while so vast an amount of 
iron and raw material is being spent upon the 
prosecution of the war itself, to replace the rolling 
stock of the Allied railway systems, already 
badly depleted in Great Britain, France, and 
the United States. A third vast demand is also 
made upon these raw materials for ship-building. 
If the material goes into ships the amount avail- 
able for guns and for ammunition is that much 
less. If it goes into railroads itcannot gointoships. 
The limit is already reached in all the Allied 
countries to which these three programs can be 
simultaneously pushed forward. Indeed, it is 
already doubtful whether the three can simul- 
taneously proceed to the extent which the prose- 
cution of an offensive by the Allies makes indis- 
pensable. The larger the army in France the 
greater the burden on the ships, the railroads, 
the factories, the mines, and the fewer are the 
available laborers. Meanwhile, the permanent 
plant of the community — the houses, streets, 
road-beds, bridges — has been undergoing an un- 
usual strain and receiving rather less than the 
usual repair. It must not be forgotten that a 

288 



DEFEAT THROUGH VICTORY 

very great section of the community annually 
devotes its entire labor to the replacing of the 
plant which has worn out by the wear and tear 
of living. There is a length of time beyond which 
this repair cannot be postponed without seri- 
ously complicating the problem of the continu- 
ation of the war and the reconstruction of the 
world after peace has been signed. 

Great Britain and the United States, and in 
large measure France, have thus far financed the 
war by traditional taxes and loans. They have 
bought from private concerns and paid a profit 
and are paying wages or allowances to the men 
in the army. The length of time these nations 
can thus finance the war is by no means un- 
limited, and the effort which they can thus 
conceivably exert in its prosecution is also very 
decidedly circumscribed. Vast accumulations of 
capital, great banking systems, and credit struct- 
ures are here of little moment except as media 
of exchange. The essential element is the ability 
of the nation to produce. More than that the 
state cannot have and to that the loans and taxes 
are limited. After the subsistence of the nation 
at home has been subtracted, the residuum can 
be spent or confiscated or conscripted. But if 
the amount of material which the state wishes 
to devote to the prosecution of the war becomes 
more than this amount, it cannot be had, not 
because the credit of the nation is not good, but 
because the material with which the war itself 
must be prosecuted is not in existence. No 
amount of credit, no flotation of bonds, can be 

289 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

pushed beyond the power of the nation to pro- 
duce what is needed within the time available 
for its production. 

It is at present hardly expedient, in view of 
the all but certain loss of Russian man power 
and resources to the Allies and their entirely 
possible addition to the Germans, to assume a 
very pronounced inequality of men and of re- 
sources in favor of the Allies. The ratio between 
the offensive and the defensive is at present 
placed at not less than six to one, and it is a 
very grave question indeed whether the Allies 
can exert six times as much strength as the 
Germans, can produce six times as much muni- 
tions for the number of years necessary to clear 
the entire conquered territory of Germans, to 
invade Germany itself, and take Berlin. If the 
cost of the prosecution of the war during the 
last year by the Allies is any indication at all 
of its cost in the future, a maximum military 
victory can be had only by a destruction of 
the man power and economic resources of France 
and Great Britain which would leave them in 
the future so weak as to be unable to use the 
victory they had won. For the United States 
such losses will be positively less significant, 
but the future safety of the United States depends 
upon the continued strength of Great Britain 
and France in Europe. It is not to our interest 
to allow them thus to weaken themselves nor 
can it be expedient for them. Their positive 
inferiority in numbers and in area, compared 
with the Central Empires, is already so great, 

290 



DEFEAT THROUGH VICTORY 

their recuperative power comparatively so much 
less, that any loss for them is relatively more 
serious than it can be for the Central Empires. 
If they should be thus weakened by the prose- 
cution of the war, the Central Powers would 
become dominant in Europe, whatever their fort- 
unes in the field. Indeed, a military defeat for 
the Allies would be less serious, if it left them still 
strong in men and with resources unimpaired, 
than such a victory. France and Great Britain 
must emerge from the war powerful, united, and 
solvent, by whatever name the result is described. 
It is entirely possible for the Allies to lose the 
war by winning it at a certain price. 

Nor is it by any means certain that a military 
victory would destroy the strength of Central 
Europe and the danger of its predominance 
which the Allies so greatly fear. Neither its 
true basis nor its greatest strength lies in those 
factors which armies can affect or destroy. The 
dangers are economic and administrative rather 
than military. Once we assume that the German 
people themselves are honestly ambitious to ex- 
pand, to increase their dominion in Africa and 
their power upon the sea, the aggressive power 
of the army becomes by no means the most 
dangerous element in Pan-Germanism. Its real 
strength lies in the new methods of communica- 
tion by railroad, telegraph, and steamship; in 
the new economics of nationalization; in the 
new co-operative finance and in the new applied 
science. The annihilation of distance and of 
time by the new devices for communication have 

291 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

made the efficient administration of such great 
areas as Germany and Austria-Hungary for the 
first time feasible, and has for the first time in 
history made their strength available. The rail- 
road again has made economic unity between 
them a fact, the interchange of goods a possi- 
bility, and their association in one tariff union 
expedient. It is in the new industrial chemistry, 
in physics, in biology, that German supremacy 
really lies. Less capable of original ideas than 
the British or the French, certainly outdistanced 
by the Americans in useful inventions, the Ger- 
mans have proved themselves better able to 
develop and commercially utilize the inventions 
of other races than those races themselves. An 
American invented the aeroplane, but the Ger- 
mans found out how to use it. The submarine 
is an American invention, but a German weapon. 
Chemistry was discovered by the British and was 
utilized by the Germans. These bases of Ger- 
man strength and prosperity are unassailable by 
armies, nor can they be destroyed by new politi- 
cal combinations or by paper treaties of peace. 
Still less will a military defeat, however sweep- 
ing, change an existing consensus of opinion 
among the peoples of Central Europe in regard 
to the desirability of independence, of unity, 
and of mutual co-operation. If they do vote 
to support the Government and to co-operate 
for ends upon which they do agree, the strength 
of all the armies of the world, winning innumer- 
able victories in the field and leading to the sig- 
nature of humiliating treaties and to the adoption 

292 



DEFEAT THROUGH VICTORY 

of constitutional expedients, will be unavailing 
to destroy and weaken that willingness to exert 
the national strength for aggressive ends. If the 
Allies are right that such a spirit is not 
dominant in the people of the Central Empires, 
no military victory is needed to achieve Allied 
safety. If they are wrong in their analysis, no 
military victory can render them permanently 
safe from it. 

Still less can armies accomplish the spiritual 
and moral regeneration of the Central Empires. 
In the long run, that alone can make democracy 
secure. Some will object to such a contention 
on the score of its too great regard for mercy; 
others will cavil because its obvious prudence 
and expediency remove its merit as a moral ap- 
peal. If the view espoused of the moral re- 
sponsibility of the peoples of the Central Em- 
pires as a whole be correct, the greatest future 
danger from them lies in their moral attitude 
rather than in their military prowess or economic 
assets. Those are but the tools of the brain. No 
victory can be constructive which is couched 
in terms or phrases which aggravate rather than 
diminish the danger from this moral attitude. 
Many in the Allied countries view the catas- 
trophe in Italy with feelings almost of physical 
suffering because of the fear that it postpones 
or even renders more remote the infliction upon 
the Germans of that physical chastisement so 
many feel their deeds deserve. We have not 
yet been able to throw off the heritage of the 
flesh and the ills to which it is heir, to resist 

293 



THE WINNING OP THE WAR 

at first our impulse to retaliate with suffering 
for suffering, to demand our pound of flesh and 
an eye for an eye. Even the wisest and greatest 
of men have found it difficult to remember that 
the Scriptures say, "Vengeance is mine." It is 
natural for us to forget that men, still less na- 
tions, have not been commonly converted or 
led to true repentance by physical abuse or 
suffering. A military victory inflicts physical 
punishment, and a cry for the crushing of Ger- 
many is an attempt to secure her moral reform 
through her physical degradation. Leaving one 
side the question of whether such a demand is 
un-Christian, inconsistent with the true object 
of the Allied crusade, it is still inexpedient be- 
cause a thousand times proved unavailing to 
achieve its ultimate objective. Such military 
and physical punishment leads to convictions 
of injured innocence, to claims of the ulterior 
purpose of the "conquerors." It is more likely 
to convince the vanquished of the justifiability 
of their own cause in the war than it is to lead 
them to repent the methods by which they con- 
ducted it. It commonly results in new wars. 

It will not be necessary for us to change our 
estimate of German brutality, to declare that 
the great stain of atrocities is wiped out and 
forgotten, to profess an entire willingness to 
trust the Germans in the future, or to believe 
ourselves capable as yet of loving them in all 
sincerity and honesty. We must, on the con- 
trary, maintain our moral reprobation of the 
beginning of the war and of its conduct long 

294 



DEFEAT THROUGH VICTORY 

after it is over. It is our most powerful and 
effective weapon against them, the one method 
by which they may be convinced of the enormity 
of their sin. In our desire to educate them, to 
reach them by brotherly love and by spiritual 
appeals, there must never be any doubt left 
of the reality of the crime nor of the personnel 
of its perpetrators. But if we base our demand for 
victory upon high moral indignation over German 
crimes, we cannot consistently abandon that 
spiritual attitude when we come to define the 
terms of peace. We cannot couch them in the 
traditional language of aggression and of the 
old diplomacy — noblesse oblige. We should con- 
duct ourselves with moderation and humanity, 
display at the close of the war a disinterestedness 
which shall convince them that we have in all 
truth not pursued the war for vindictive, re- 
vengeful, covetous, and selfish motives. We 
cannot charge them with brutality, retaliate 
with conquest, and expect their moral regen- 
eration. Spiritual truth has never been beaten 
into murderers and drunkards with clubs, nor 
into nations by military conquest, by the par- 
tition of their territory and the vindictive pro- 
scription of their leaders. If the magnificent 
elan with which the Allies entered the war, the 
splendor of the moral crusade which they have 
pursued, are to bear true fruits in Allied coun- 
tries and in Germany, the war must end by 
the display on the part of the Allied peoples 
themselves of moderation, of disinterestedness, 
and of fairness. 

£95 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

We entered the war for the safety of democ- 
racy and we must not end it with terms imposed 
upon the German people which belie the sin- 
cerity of our own professions. To force democ- 
racy upon them is so entirely undemocratic, so 
contrary to all our own theoretical beliefs, that 
such a method of conquest will most surely 
defeat its own ends. The Allied nations have 
fought the war on the highest possible moral 
plane. There they must end it. They must 
not aim at a victory open to charges of revenge 
for past wrongs, of commercial greed, or of 
selfish aggrandizement. They must not bring 
forth peace clad in the traditional expedients 
of secret diplomacy, of aggression, and of con- 
quest, long familiar to the Germans in past ages, 
and expect that sort of peace to be accepted 
with rejoicing. Still less will it be permanent. 
Permanent peace must rest upon the conversion 
of the people of the Central Empires. But they 
must repent of their own free will. Their 
spiritual regeneration they alone can accomplish. 
Thus have we preached in our defense of the 
war. Shall we deny our Lord now that the end 
is approaching and victory in sight? 

There will be those who will insist that the 
Germans deserve no such treatment, and they 
will be right. Not their deserts, but our own 
humanity exacts from us in the interest of civil- 
ization magnanimity and moderation. We 
must not by our- own act destroy the structure 
for whose perpetuation we have shed so much 
blood and spent so much treasure. Nor is it 

296 



DEFEAT THROUGH VICTORY 

necessary. Still less is it expedient for the Allies 
to abandon international realities, exhaust their 
own strength, and deny the literal truth of their 
own moral professions merely to win in Europe 
objectives which are no longer of moment. The 
control of the world is no longer to be decided 
in Europe; it rests no longer in the hands of 
European coalitions. The Allies cannot to-day 
lose international status by a defeat in Europe. 
Even if it were possible for them to win in Eu- 
rope a maximum victory of the old type, it is 
no longer expedient, because the world has 
changed. The old victory can never again have 
the old effect, whether won by the Allies or by 
the Germans. Neither can win what they in- 
tended or lose what they most feared. 



XXI 

THE OLD EUROPE AND THE NEW 

IF we look solely at the European situation 
and view it in the light of the old diplomacy 
and strategical geography, it is difficult to see 
how the Allies can win the war. No certainty 
of victory can be predicated, and there can be 
little doubt that the achievement of victory in 
the older sense and with the older objectives will 
require a greater effort than it is expedient for 
them to exert. Such a victory would be tanta- 
mount to defeat in the greater objectives. Let 
us not, however, leap hastily to the conclusion 
that the war is therefore lost. It is by no means 
true that the safety of democracy in the world 
to-day rests upon a balance of power primarily 
European. One of the greatest difficulties thus 
far in the prosecution of the war has been the 
assumption that victory must possess certain 
traditional characteristics, be achieved in cer- 
tain traditional ways and in certain definite 
places. At the first the Allies assumed that the 
past could be restored, Germany punished, 
safety assured only by the old methods and by 
the old machinery, in existence at the beginning 

298 



THE OLD EUROPE AND THE NEW 

of the war and consecrated by centuries of usage. 
It is very hard for many now to face the growing 
conviction that the war is not to be won in the 
old way nor by the attainment of the old ob- 
jectives. More and more men are coming to 
realize in the Allied countries that in the old 
sense of victory Germany is winning the war 
and has already achieved so much as to make 
problematical the attainment by the Allies of 
the older type of victory which they started out 
to win. 

In those first anguished moments when it 
seemed as if democracy and morality were about 
to be trodden under foot and the achievements 
of civilization destroyed, the Allies, as was 
natural, recalled the one formula from the past 
which gave them a remedy for the situation that 
confronted them. A weak Germany and a 
strong Russia would solve their problem. What 
was simpler than to weaken the one and to 
strengthen the other? Promptly they started 
out to apply the magic formula and at once 
were compelled to phrase democratic ideals in 
the policies and terminology of the old diplo- 
macy. They described a peace which should 
include democracy and internationalism in the 
language of the older expedients and of the older 
alliances. They sketched the restoration of the 
old France, of the old particularistic Germany, 
and of feudalistic Austria. When the Russian 
Revolution took place, they cried out that it 
was more necessary than ever that Germany 
should be weakened and divided, Russia re- 

20 299 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

organized and strengthened. How might it be 
done? men asked. Once more they replied with 
the old formula. We must conquer Germany 
with the aid of the Germans themselves, just 
as was done in the Refoimation, in the Thirty 
Years' War, in the Napoleonic period. We must 
set Germany and Austria to loggerheads and 
return to the policies of Olmutz and the War of 
1866. We must protect ourselves against the 
aggressive strength of these nations by creating 
buffer states under Allied patronage; we can 
and must revive the Napoleonic Duchy of War- 
saw, the Denmark of 1852, the Napoleonic Re- 
public of Illyria. Austria must be broken up 
and destroyed by the old method attempted 
against Maria Theresa, by a concerted revolt of 
the subject people, by a breach between Austria 
and Hungary. Once more, just as at the begin- 
ning of the Thirty Years' War, we hear that an 
independent Bohemia must be created. 

Let us not be blind to the fact that these are 
the expedients by which secret diplomacy in 
the past instituted and attempted to perpetuate 
aggression and conquest. They speak the lan- 
guage of Richelieu and Louis XIV., of Napoleon 
and Metternich, of Canning and Wellington. 
They anticipate another defeat of the Armada, 
a second Jena, another treaty of Westphalia. 
Unfortunately, they depend upon the old ex- 
pedient of fighting the devil with fire. They 
are not democratic methods nor yet imbued 
with the premises of liberty. They speak the 
language of tyranny and revive the devices of 

300 



THE OLD EUROPE AND THE NEW 

autocracy. They involve the old statecraft and 
the old diplomacy, the old farcical international 
law, and the restoration of the old boundary 
feuds. Such a victory would be entirely in- 
consistent with the moral stand upon the origin 
of the war and with the professions of the Allies 
about democracy and the future of civilization. 
It was inevitable at the very outset of the war 
that the images of the past should have been 
vivid in the European mind and the ideals of 
the future as yet faint, that the expedients by 
which Germany and Austria had been curbed 
in the past should seem infallible, and the newer 
methods, based upon the logic of the future, 
weak and despicable. There was in such a 
dependence upon the past nothing blameworthy, 
for the reality of aggression and of conquest, 
the principles of autocracy and of greed, were 
no longer facts in Allied minds. 

Let us candidly admit the magnitude of Ger- 
man achievements during the war, not in the 
least to arouse our admiration for their perpe- 
trators, but to appraise justly the task before 
us and to confirm our apprehensions and fears. 
There are already many who neither love the 
Germans nor fear them. We need more who 
will not underestimate the Germans merely be- 
cause they despise them. It must be owned 
that if the old formula of victory is infallible, 
the Germans have already won the war. They 
hold in their hands the keys to Europe, Belgium, 
Alsace-Lorraine, the Trentino and the Italian 
passes, the great roads and passes of the Bal- 

301 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

kans, the Danube, and the passes of the Car- 
pathians, the military frontiers and approaches 
between Germany and Poland. They are mas- 
ters of the Black Sea and of Constantinople. 
They hold in proud possession the lands and en- 
trances to the Baltic. Everywhere they have 
fought and continue to fight upon enemy soil, with 
the enemies' resources, and with the aid of a sub- 
ject population. Despite some shifts and changes 
of position on the West Front, their line still 
holds practically as they drew it after the battle 
of the Marne. In the east, they have swept all 
before them. Poland has been overrun and de- 
stroyed; the Russian army defeated and dis- 
organized ; Rumania occupied in one of the most 
rapid and successful campaigns in the history 
of warfare; Serbia reduced to ashes; and now 
in Italy a great victory already registered and 
a position occupied from which still more im- 
portant achievements are possible. Let us not 
stultify ourselves by denying the consequence 
of such campaigns. 

Is it possible for the Allies by a military victory 
of any size or type to restore the old Europe, 
to invoke successfully the old formula which 
they have already so many times pronounced, 
of a weak and disunited Germany at odds with 
Austria, held in check by a strong Russia, allied 
with France and Great Britain? It is not too 
much to say that such a victory is literally im- 
possible. The old Europe cannot be restored or 
maintained because the old Europe is already 
destroyed. Whatever may happen, the old bal- 

302^ 



THE OLD EUROPE AND THE NEW 

ance of power is no more. Germany will remain 
too strong for the formula; Russia too weak. 
Whether or not a democratic revolt takes place 
in Germany, it is from all points of view prob- 
able that she will remain sufficiently united for 
purposes of defense. It is safe to predict that 
she has been conquered for the last time with 
the aid of Germans. The South Germans will 
not again assist in the conquest of Prussia, nor 
Austria-Hungary and Germany be found on 
opposite sides of the battle-field. For half a 
century a great campaign has been conducted 
in schools, churches, universities, lecture bureaus, 
newspapers, novels, histories, to demonstrate 
how fatal to Germany in the past has been this 
co-operation of Germans with the foreigners and 
to render it forever impossible. The work has 
been done with German thoroughness, if without 
any great or scrupulous regard for truth. Cer- 
tainly the solidarity of Mittel-Europa will serve 
all defensive purposes, however deficient it may 
prove as the problems of the future crowd upon 
the new entity. 

No one event has so fundamentally changed 
Europe and the world as the Russian Revolu- 
tion. It intensifies and magnifies all other alter- 
ations in strategic dispositions. The hostility 
of the old dynasty to the new Germany was the 
very basis of the balance of power, for it wielded 
not too capably the potential strength of one 
hundred and eighty millions of people and the 
economic resources of an area twice as large 
as the rest of Europe. Its very potentiality 

303 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

furnished the necessary counterpoise in strength 
in Europe to the rapid growth of Central Europe 
in population and to its even more astounding 
economic development. Russia's location on 
the vulnerable eastern frontier of Germany, its 
possession of Warsaw, its menace in the Black 
Sea to the Danube and the Balkans, made it 
feasible to plan an assault upon the new Pan- 
Germanism with some prospect of success. Rus- 
sia not only had long dreamed of the possession 
of Constantinople, but she already held a strateg- 
ic position to which Constantinople could be 
added, and which she had the necessary strength 
to defend against a united, well-organized, and 
militant Germany and Austria-Hungary. By 
Russia alone could the extension of the 
Pan-Germanic Confederation into the Balkans 
and Asia Minor be prevented. By Russia 
alone could the Balkans be organized as 
states hostile to Pan-Germanism because she 
alone possessed natural interests of race and 
economic association with them. Without Rus- 
sian aid, the creation of the Pan-Germanic 
league was long ago conceded to be inevitable. 

Russia, moreover, would be a dependable 
ally for France and Great Britain. The dynasty 
had for two centuries cherished the policy of 
securing an exit for Russia from the Baltic or 
Black Sea into the open ocean or at least into 
the Mediterranean. Czars had plotted and 
schemed, sent millions to death, stooped to 
murder and vulgar intrigue to accomplish so 
much as had been achieved toward the great 

304 



THE OLD EUROPE AND THE NEW 

end. Then as the number and strength of pos- 
sible foes seemed to be diminishing and the am- 
bition of centuries seemed about to be fulfilled, 
there was hatched and developed the one scheme 
which might not improbably postpone for a cen- 
tury or two the goal of endeavor. The loyalty 
of the dynasty to the western powers, none too 
well assured since 1890, became after 1907 un- 
shakable. The war destroyed the army; the 
Revolution destroyed the Russian administra- 
tive fabric, inaugurated a reign of chaos in in- 
dustry and agriculture, and swept away the 
policies and alliances of the monarchy. The 
old balance of power in Europe fell with a crash. 
The equipoise to a possible Pan-Germany was 
destroyed, the obstacle in its path removed, 
its one redoubtable foe in future done to death. 
Without Russia Constantinople cannot be held, 
even if won, or the Balkans protected against 
a united Germany and Austria-Hungary knock- 
ing at the gates. Without Russia the territorial 
settlement promised by the Allies can neither 
be won nor maintained. It has indeed become 
literally inexpedient. It assumed the continued 
existence of elements in the situation which have 
disappeared. 

The old Europe cannot be restored because 
it was in part based upon factors not controlled 
by armies nor to be created by victories in the 
field. The prime weakness of Germany and 
Austria in the past was the lack of facilities 
of transportation and communication adequate 
for the trade and administration of so large an 

305 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

area, inhabited by so many people. Both were 
countries too large for their facilities of com- 
munication, too unwieldy to be governed as 
single entities; communication was too slow 
to insure efficient co-operation between their 
parts. In such a soil the old antipathies and 
hatreds were long nourished and were slow to 
disappear. The railroad, Bismarck saw, solved 
the problem of unity. It made possible the suc- 
cessful administration of Germany as a whole; 
it made profitable overland trade between the 
German states; the new science solved the diffi- 
culties of industry; the new machinery pro- 
vided work for people hitherto condemned to 
unprofitable agriculture on worn-out fields. So, 
too, the railroad and the telegraph made it pos- 
sible to enlist the full strength of the population 
in the army. The new science put weapons into 
their hands in sufficient quantities. The size 
of the population became a real asset and ceased- 
to be a liability. The railroads, the new educa- 
tion, the new communications, the newspapers, 
the new profit within the tariff union, created a 
new community of feeling, a consensus of opinion 
about the desirability of the new state, which 
had never existed in the past and which would 
be the all-important element assuring the con- 
tinuity and perpetuation of this new-found unity 
and co-operation. There had always been in 
Germany the elements of great strength; they 
had merely needed to be organized, unified, and 
combined. 

So in Austria and in Hungary the old hatred 

306 



THE OLD EUROPE AND THE NEW 

of the Germans, of the Magyars, and of the 
Slavs for one another, based upon the old an- 
tipathies, have been weakened in large measure 
by the economics of nationalization, by the work 
of the railroads, by the new science, by travel 
and by immigration, by the profits of the tariff 
union. The old consciousness of difference has 
been less keen; the old racial lines are less real 
and now represent a*movement for local auton- 
omy rather than for national independence. The 
old Germany and Austria were weak because 
divided not only by political and administrative 
lines, but by time and space, by the difficulty 
of communication, and by the relics of feudalism. 
The old weakness of Germany, upon which for 
so many generations the international status of 
France and Great Britain depended, can never 
be restored; the work of the nineteenth century 
cannot be undone. The sort of weakness which 
the old formula predicated will never again 
exist. The sort of disunion which the old form- 
ula assumed in Austria-Hungary is no longer 
probable. 

It is equally impossible for the Allies them- 
selves to restore the sort of position they once 
held in Europe. The Italians indeed have no 
love for the sort of position they used to hold, 
but with the French and the English there is 
still a longing for the old predominance they 
once cherished and for which the names of Na- 
poleon and of Nelson, of Austerlitz and of Traf- 
algar, stand. 

France, between 1814 and 1870, held a position 
307 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

in Europe by no means dependent upon her ter- 
ritorial dispositions or her international alliances. 
Compared with other states, her population was 
great and her area wide, her fields rich and 
her industrial organization strong. The Revo- 
lution had freed her from the shackles of feu- 
dalism at a time when Central Europe and Italy 
still groaned under its fetters. The great ad- 
ministrative and legal reconstruction of the Na- 
poleonic regime had brought a solution of the 
problem of adequate administration at a time 
when all other continental states were hampered 
and weakened in international policy by the in- 
competence of their administrative and execu- 
tive machinery. France possessed also a national 
unity far more complete than other countries 
had, if we except England, a consensus of opin- 
ion of the desirability of its continuance which 
no other country but England possessed. The 
campaigns of Napoleon had given her prestige as 
the greatest military nation, and from that long 
quarter of a century of conquest and domination 
had come an elan, a national pride, a conscious- 
ness of superiority, which Frenchmen treasured. 
Unquestionably the old France can never re- 
turn. Her relatively greater strength, due to 
her earlier freedom from the feudalistic regime, 
has been destroyed during the nineteenth cen- 
tury by the complete freedom of all European 
communities (except in the Balkans) from the 
shackles of the past. The industrial monopoly 
of machinery which France and Great Britain 
then shared is now common to all European 

308 



THE OLD EUROPE AND THE NEW 

communities. Scientific agriculture has made 
possible the cultivation of fields in Europe which 
could not compete with the fertile French areas 
in 1814. The railroads have brought into the 
market transatlantic areas which have driven 
out of cultivation the French fields themselves. 
No longer has France so great an administrative 
handicap over other European nations. Bis- 
marck, Beust, Andrassy, Cavour, have reorgan- 
ized the rest of Europe. France is no longer the 
best organized and therefore the most powerful 
nation, no longer the wealthiest because the 
most efficient. While the national unity of 
France was extraordinary in 1814, it was in 1914 
by no means exceptional. In 1870 French mili- 
tary prestige suffered a humiliation which has 
not yet been forgotten or forgiven. The old 
unassailable France, secure within her great 
frontiers, assured of her military strength and 
her administrative competence, conscious of the 
heritage of the eighteenth century and her tra- 
ditions of superiority over the rest of Europe — 
this France is gone forever. The Second Em- 
pire can no more be restored than the Old 
Regime. The old ascendancy of France was not 
primarily political, military, or diplomatic, but 
cultural, literary, social, economic. It was not 
positive, but relative — French achievement com- 
pared with that of other nations. No military 
conquest can restore that ascendancy in Eu- 
rope, for it rested upon elements which armies 
only partially created and which the nineteenth 
century itself has destroyed. The new imperial 

309 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

France, consecrated by the war, will hold a loftier 
and prouder place in history, but it will be a new 
France, not the old. 

Similarly, the older England has been merged 
into the Greater Britain and the predominance 
of 1814 lost in the process of transformation 
from kingdom to empire. The reality behind 
the magic words Trafalgar and Waterloo was the 
great economic monopoly which the invention 
of machinery gave to England and which the 
outbreak of the Napoleonic wars enabled her 
to keep as an exclusive possession for nearly a 
quarter of a century. For that long period she 
was the only nation able to manufacture on a 
peace basis. It gave her a monopoly of the 
world's market for manufactured goods and 
laid the foundation of her great industrial fabric 
and her present accumulation of capital. Her 
predominance lay next in the fact that her mer- 
chant marine was practically the only one of 
consequence upon the sea. After the downfall 
of the American clipper ships, it remained for 
nearly a generation unchallenged in its suprem- 
acy and control of the world's transportation. 
She had also for many years a practical control 
of the source of supply of the great staples then 
imported into Europe — cotton, tobacco, indigo, 
sugar, tea, coffee, known at that time as "the 
colonial goods." Bulky freight was not at that 
time commonly transported across the ocean, 
and in the only kind of foreign trade pursued 
in Europe at a profit the English possessed not 
only the ships, but control of the source of sup- 

310 



THE OLD EUROPE AND THE NEW 

ply. They, too, had solved the administrative 
problem with which Central Europe was then 
struggling. They, too, had rid themselves, far 
earlier than France, of the vestiges of feudalism. 
They, too, had tasted the blessings of peace and 
the importance of intellectual endeavor. They, 
too, had long known national unity, administra- 
tive competence, and a consciousness of security. 
The supremacy of the British navy rested not 
alone upon seamanship and ability of the first 
quality, not only upon the victories of Nelson 
and the achievements of Blake, but at this time 
in almost equal degree upon the paramount im- 
portance of the transport of bulky goods by 
water. Before the days of the railroad, overland 
transportation imposed an almost insuperable 
barrier in the ways of profitable trade. Water 
transportation was then all important, and a 
nation which controlled as completely as Eng- 
land did the water and all of its ways possessed 
naturally a pre-eminence and a predominance 
in the interests of other nations which can never 
return, now that the railroad has made possible 
the transport of bulky goods overland. The 
navy's supremacy was also assured by the fact 
that war-ships were then built of wood and 
calked with tar and pitch. The main source of 
naval supplies for Europe lay in the Baltic, and 
the English had long seen the importance of 
controlling it. Once, therefore, the fleets of 
their rivals were destroyed, it was impossible 
to rebuild them as long as the English fleet itself 
controlled access to the main source of supply. 

311 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

This predominance of England is gone for- 
ever. No longer does she possess a monopoly 
of machinery, still less of the opportunity to 
use it; there is no longer a monopoly of the 
material from which navies are built nor of the 
source of supply of goods used in foreign trade. 
Not only her navy, but her merchant marine 
now finds upon the sea powerful rivals. The 
old prestige of the England of 1814 and of Water- 
loo spoke in the language of the world's financial 
capital, of the industrial revolution, and of 
wooden ships. It was destroyed long ago by 
the extension of science and invention through- 
out the world, by the use of steel, and can never 
return. The coming prestige of the new British 
Empire, organized during the war, will more than 
take its place, but it cannot restore it. The old 
Europe is gone — no military victory can revive 
it — and with it the older Britain. 

Possession of the old strategic dispositions can 
no longer confer the former conclusive results or 
assure the old degree of military control. To be 
sure, Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine still control 
France and still hold the roads to Germany. 
The Italian passes are still potent factors in 
military campaigns, and it would be useless to 
contravene the value of Constantinople or the 
importance of Warsaw, but never again can the 
possession of these objectives lead to the same 
international results. Never again can the war 
be won or lost solely in Belgium. It is not that 
the military terrain there is altered, but that 
all the administrative, economic, and social fac- 

312 



THE OLD EUROPE AND THE NEW 

tors which formerly controlled the value of the 
military dispositions can never be what once they 
were. We must predicate the same sort of Ger- 
mans there used to be, the same sort of a France 
and an Austria, the economic incompetence of 
Central Europe, before the interchange of terri- 
torial entities between them can restore the old 
relationships or have the old importance. Even 
a maximum military victory, resulting in the 
list of territorial concessions which the Allies 
have presumed would follow from the revolt in 
Austria-Hungary and Germany, would be devoid 
of the effect which the old formulas assumed, 
because every other factor in the situation is 
fundamentally altered. The certainty of victory 
can no longer be predicted in terms of the old 
formula either for the Allies or for the Germans. 
It is not the territory the Germans hold which 
makes them formidable; it is their will and their 
ability to use it. It is not the army which we 
must fear, but the spirit behind it. It is not the 
domination of Germany and Austria-Hungary 
by an autocratic, militaristic regime which need 
terrify us, but the fear that the people themselves 
approve of the general object of the war and the 
method of its prosecution. It is against this 
new spirit of aggression in the Central European 
peoples that we must guard. The old weapons 
have broken in our hands and the old barriers 
have been thrown down. We must look for 
safety to new weapons, to new strategic dis- 
positions, to new forces and formulas. 



XXII 

THE POSITIVE ASSURANCE OF GERMAN DEFEAT 

ANEW world has grown into existence out- 
side Europe of which Europe is but a part. 
Pan-Germanism planned its domination; the 
Allies invited its co-operation upon terms of 
equality. The Allies have already won. They 
have lost Europe and won the world. And shall 
not the world control Europe? If the Allies can 
no longer by the old formula restore the Europe 
that was, still less can the Central Empires by 
the old strategic dispositions prevent the con- 
trol of the world by the new internationalism that 
has come into being. If the Allies must admit 
that force cannot destroy the new economic 
and political unity of Central Europe created 
by the railroad and telegraph, the new science 
and the labor of half a century, so, too, must 
the Germans learn that the new internationalism 
is more potent than armies and no less real than 
Germany itself. It, too, rests upon the new 
means of communication and the new science. 
It, too, is a natural growth of natural forces, the 
results of which neither armies nor navies can 
undo. If the population of Germany and Austria- 

314 



POSITIVE ASSURANCE OP GERMAN DEFEAT 

Hungary has grown by leaps and bounds, so 
has that of the United States, of South America, 
and of Australia. If the industrial structure of 
the new Germany is vast and complex, so, too, 
is that of the United States. If Mittel-Europa 
is an economic reality and a new international 
force created during the last generation, so, too, 
are South America and Japan. If German unity 
is the result of the political union of existing 
forces, so, too, is the British Empire. The one 
is no less new, no less real, and it may be more 
potent than the other. Everywhere around the 
new Germany, blind in its own conceit, rise 
realities, rank upon rank, row upon row, all of 
them proof against principalities and powers, 
proof against armies and ruthlessness, invul- 
nerable in their united might, relentless in their 
purposeful antagonism to the ideas of Kultur 
and of autocracy. 

The war is won. The Allies have merely to 
recognize the potency of the new internationalism 
and shape their future plans and campaigns in 
accordance with the dispositions which it dic- 
tates, in the fashion best to utilize the vast 
forces it provides. We shall not need to win 
victory in the old way. We have merely to 
recognize that new forces have already presented 
us with a victory far more extensive and un- 
questionably more likely to endure, a hundred, 
fold less vulnerable and exposed to assault, a 
thousandfold more desirable. It is the work of 
the war itself, of the nineteenth century, of 
civilization and democracy in their own defense, 

21 315 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

themselves more potent than French armies and 
British fleets. In the strict sense of the word the 
preservation of democracy is impossible. The 
Allies cannot accomplish it by any victory, for 
the war has already transformed it. We cannot 
perpetuate and defend the old democracy, for 
it is already dead. The old concepts of civili- 
zation cannot be protected; the war itself has 
already destroyed them and substituted a broader 
and nobler ideal. International law, the old 
regard for treaties at the moment the war broke 
out, cannot be restored. A new notion of both 
has been created by the war itself beyond the 
power of the contending forces to alter. Just 
as the statesmanship of Viscount Grey was sure 
to fail because it rested upon the old diplomacy 
and the old assumptions, so the statesmanship 
of Woodrow Wilson cannot fail because it is the 
expression of the new internationalism. Its 
purposes are securely founded in the new mo- 
rality, in the new consciousness that Europe is 
not the world, but a part of it, and that the 
equality of democracy extends to nations as well 
as to individuals. 

What, then, can the Allies lose by defeat? 
What at most can the Germans win by victory? 
An absolute balance of power in Europe, always 
iniquitous, never strong, never ethical, always 
an undemocratic method of settling the disputes 
of Europe and of the world, proclaiming a 
domination of the world always offensive. The 
Allies may lose a domination of Europe which 
could no longer carry with it the control of the 

316 



POSITIVE ASSURANCE OF GERMAN DEFEAT 

globe. Even if the Germans win predominance 
in Europe, they cannot by its means extort con- 
trol of the world's trade nor dictate to South 
America, Asia, and Africa. 

But they will not win predominance in Eu- 
rope. They can no longer by the old European 
dispositions imperil the safety of England and 
France in the sense that once they might have. 
Europe is no longer to be controlled by European 
arrangements alone, but by the international 
situation as a whole. No longer will world 
affairs turn upon the relation of the strategic 
position of Belgium to that of Alsace-Lorraine. 
The strategic dispositions of the world arena 
must now be considered, the interests of nations 
other than European powers. The new align- 
ment and strategic dispositions in Europe itself 
will be in all probability dependent upon non- 
European facts. Nothing can any longer be 
won in Europe alone. Nothing won in Europe 
can of itself decisively affect the international 
situation. 

The Allies have won already because France 
and Belgium are safe, because France, Great 
Britain, and Italy are now merely the European 
members of a vast democratic alliance which 
includes the British Empire, the United States, 
the larger South American nations, and Japan. 
Internationalism is safe because the Allies al- 
ready control the new international fabric which 
will certainly, by reason of its very existence, 
readjust the European balance and impose upon 
the powers of Europe a new morality, a new re- 

317 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

gard for the equality of nations, a new respect 
for law. The war has brought into existence a 
new international grouping, based upon the 
world itself as an entity, upon the acceptance 
of the independence of the non-European world, 
upon the equality of its members, upon the in- 
terest of Asia, Africa, and America in the solu- 
tion of European problems. It has long been 
recognized that Europe possessed vital interests 
in the settlement of problems in other parts of 
the globe. It had yet to be made clear that the 
other sections of the globe possessed interest in 
the decisions made in Europe and that they pro- 
posed no longer blindly to accept what the Eu- 
ropeans dictated. The safety of the world, the 
safety of democracy and of internationalism, no 
longer rest upon purely European dispositions. 
They can no longer be permanently threatened 
by victories won in Europe, nor by any European 
coalition, however large. 

Indeed, if we study the force and potency of 
the new internationalism, the great forces which 
the war itself has brought into the field, those 
still greater forces of which the war has secured 
recognition, it is difficult to imagine how the 
Allies can lose the war or the Germans win it. 
The war has brought a formal recognition of 
the reality of internationalism: the fact that 
the world is not controlled by Europe and is not 
going to be, that the world ought not in the 
past to have been controlled by Europe and its 
own selfish interests, and will no longer be so 
ruled in the future. This fact the Allies are 

318 



POSITIVE ASSURANCE OF GERMAN DEFEAT 

powerless to change by any victory in Europe. 
They can no longer restore the old international 
system that was. Neither can the Germans by 
any victory whatever in Europe preserve the 
old internationalism and the old assumed dom- 
ination of Europe over the rest of the world. A 
real international democracy had been created 
by the development of Asia, Africa, and America 
during the nineteenth century. It is a fact in- 
disputable and indubitable. The new members 
of the international concert are the veritable 
equals of the older European powers, their mili- 
tary and naval strength in some cases more vast, 
their strategic position of the very first conse- 
quence, their economic resources incalculably 
greater. For a time, no doubt, they will not of 
themselves entirely control the situation, but 
the moment can only be postponed when they 
will become as potent, if not more potent, than 
the European powers combined. 

The grave sin of the Central Empires against 
democracy lies in their refusal to recognize this 
new international equality, this new international 
independence of the rest of the world of Europe. 
The great achievement of the Allies is their 
willingness and readiness to accept it, to invite 
the co-operation of the new states, to organize 
their forces, to admit them to the European 
councils on a footing of equality, to recognize 
the extent and significance of their interest in 
the European situation, their right to a voice in 
the decision of European questions, their duty 
in the safeguarding of civilization. It is in this 

319 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

very real intellectual, economic, administrative 
equality of the United States, Canada, Aus- 
tralia, South Africa, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, 
Chile, that the new internationalism has its root. 
Reality must invariably exist before theory can 
become fact. International equality must be 
based upon international reality. 

Once it was true that Europe possessed the 
physical and economic force to dominate the 
world. Once the European nations might meet 
around the council board and partition nations 
and continents in the remote confines of the 
globe. It is no longer true. The physical force 
of Europe combined is still great, but it is no 
longer sufficient to control the Western and 
Eastern Hemispheres. Their independence is a 
reality and the war has forced upon European 
powers a recognition of its existence and upon 
those nations themselves the fallacy of their 
isolation, the extent and variety of their inter- 
ests in Europe. 

Indeed, the world and Europe had merely to 
become aware of the reality of internationalism. 
For a generation the one fact which had pre- 
vented its recognition had been the closeness 
of the balance of power in Europe. Attempts 
had indeed been made by Great Britain and by 
France to extend the international area, to invite 
and secure the co-operation of the self-governing 
colonies of Great Britain, of the United States, 
and of Japan. The resistance came, as a matter 
of fact, not from Europe, but from without, not 
from the old members, but from the new. The 

320 



POSITIVE ASSURANCE OF GERMAN DEFEAT 

United States sent representatives to several 
European conferences, notably to that of Alge- 
ciras, but entirely refused to join in the discus- 
sions or to sign the documents there agreed upon 
as a participant in full equality with the older 
nations, for fear that such action might involve 
the recognition of the authority of a similar 
European conference in the Western Hemi- 
sphere. It seemed at that time to American states- 
men scarcely probable that the United States 
would be able in the least to modify the decisions 
of the European nations in regard to dispositions 
in Europe or Africa, and that, on the contrary, 
it was certain that the European nations in 
conference assembled would be able, once the 
right itself was recognized, to dictate to the 
United States and South America regarding dis- 
positions in the Western Hemisphere which might 
not be to the interest of the resident nations to 
accept. Was the United States to recognize 
the authority of a European conclave which 
might at no distant moment become dominated 
by Germany? Were the South American na- 
tions to recognize a political interest of Europe 
in South America? For the same reason Japan 
refused to participate in European councils as 
more than a spectator or to sign the documents 
agreed upon as anything more than a witness. 
The great slogan in Asia has come in recent 
years to be Asia for the Asiatics, the abolition 
of political concessions to European nations, the 
restriction of their influence in Asia, and, if 
possible, its limitation and conclusion. It was 

321 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

improbable that the vote of Japan in Europe 
could be an equivalent for the influence thus im- 
plied of the Europeans in Asia. So long as Asia 
and America, therefore, refused to enter on 
equal terms an international council, interna- 
tionalism was impossible. 

But the war has demonstrated the entire 
fallacy of the belief that the United States or 
Japan or any other nation was isolated in the 
world and dependent for its prosperity and 
safety solely upon what happened within its 
own borders. It has brought them all to the 
realization of their unity of interest with the 
European nations in what takes place in Europe. 
The collapse of Russia completely destroyed the 
delicate balance of power in Europe. The war 
itself has made the old co-operation of the Euro- 
pean powers with one another outside Europe 
impossible. So far as the control of the world 
by Europe had had any reality, it had rested 
upon the willingness of the European nations 
to undertake concerted action in Asia and Africa, 
whenever a revolt took place in either against 
the imposition of the European decision. If 
they should disagree, they would disagree at 
home. They would decide who should control 
outside Europe by their own struggles within, 
and should then loyally unite (as in China) to 
impose that decision on the alien. The Russian 
Revolution forever made that impossible. The 
deep line now drawn by the war between the 
Allies and the new Central Europe forbids such 
co-operation. Indeed, Great Britain, France, 

S22 



POSITIVE ASSURANCE OF GERMAN DEFEAT 

and Italy have been glad to call in the British 
Empire, the United States, South America, and 
Japan to redress the international balance de- 
stroyed by the war and the Russian Revolution. 
And now that the creation of Mittel - Europa 
has become possible, it is to the interest of all 
non-European nations to prevent the control of 
Europe by such a European coalition. It became 
immediately necessary for the United States to 
enter upon the war in its own defense, to insist 
upon the creation of a new internationalism, 
upon the renunciation by Europe of the old 
tradition of the rule of the world by Europe 
itself, upon a repudiation of the old European 
council of six who sat around a mahogany table 
and settled the affairs of the hemispheres. 

So, too, international law has become a reality. 
The old law was nothing better than the de- 
cisions of the prize courts and the dicta of the 
diplomats of a few European powers, made for 
their own convenience and primarily concerned 
with their relations to one another. It depended 
for its sanction upon its imposition upon the 
rest of the world by Europe itself, for it was not 
in a true sense international law, but a law made 
for the rest of the world by those nations who 
saw fit to arrogate to themselves the control of 
it. Such a law has disappeared forever. A new 
international law has come into existence, based 
upon the principle of the association of many 
nations, really sovereign, veritably equal. It is 
international in the strictest and truest sense 
and was in large measure foreseen by the theorists 

323 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

who have hitherto written on international law. 
Fortunately, therefore, a great store of prin- 
ciples is ready for its use. It rests upon the new 
proposition that Europe is not the world, but 
only a part of it, that democracy is interna- 
tional, and that the rule of law possesses no 
exclusively European sanction. The rights of 
small nations could never be predicated on the 
basis of treaties signed with relation to the Euro- 
pean situation alone: there could be there no 
sanction which European nations themselves 
could not disturb. The creation and recogni- 
tion of the new internationalism make a sanction 
for European treaties never before possible, 
based upon new elements in the world and upon 
world politics, which the European nations are 
of themselves unable to alter. 

It is idle to predict any particular form of 
international organization, name an extended 
code of international law, or create any interna- 
tional executive or legislature. The immense 
gains already registered are enough for the work 
of one generation. The reality of international- 
ism has become recognized by the whole world; 
a new sanction for international arrangements is 
already created; the illogical and indefensible 
domination of the world by Europe is ended; 
the old international executive and legislative 
council of six powers has disappeared; the old 
ethics is no more. Surely such achievements 
are sufficiently sweeping and satisfactory. The 
rest is a matter of convenience and expediency, 
a mere question of time. 

324 



POSITIVE ASSURANCE OF GERMAN DEFEAT 

The positive assurance of German defeat lies 
in the fact that the German strategy of victory 
is solely European and assumes the possibility 
of a decision of international issues through a 
European solution. Let us admit for the sake 
of argument that it is infallible so far as the old 
balance of power and the old European situation 
are concerned. Let us even go so far as to recog- 
nize that Germany may possibly secure a dom- 
inant position in Europe in the old sense. It 
will still be true that no solution has been 
achieved of the vital international objectives of 
Pan-Germanism nor a domination of Europe in 
the old sense. Neither the international situ- 
ation nor the European situation itself is what 
it once was. The influence of Europe in the 
world has decreased; the influence of the world 
in Europe is now for the first time recognized. 
A German victory would, therefore, be unable 
to achieve anything of great moment. In the 
long run an international coalition of nations 
upon the broad basis of common humanity and 
equality, an international democracy among na- 
tions of various continents, will be sure to prevail 
over the selfish interests of any one group in 
any one continent, however strong, however well 
organized. Pan-Germanism is an absurdity and 
an intellectual insult to the intelligence of the 
world. It rests upon the old fallacy, the isola- 
tion of Europe; it denies the new truths, the 
unity of the world, the equality of the conti- 
nents, the democracy of nations. German polity 
is a thing of the past, not of the future. It 

325 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

assails and demolishes a straw man. It will be 
in the long run beaten and demolished by the 
new colossus of internationalism whose existence 
the Germans do not yet seem to realize. 

The moral isolation of Germany in a demo- 
cratic world is the measure of her defeat, of its 
extent, and of its duration. The great bonds of 
association in the world are neither military, 
political, nor economic, but moral. The greatest 
forces are the convictions which actuate great 
masses of men. On the side of the Allies fight 
the moral forces of the world. They are the 
champions of democracy and internationalism, 
of liberty, freedom, and Christianity. The Ger- 
mans have sold their international birthright for 
a mess of pottage. The morality of the world 
is not that of Germany. Bureaucratic and mili- 
taristic administration has its home only in the 
Central Empires. The German notion of inter- 
national law has been repudiated with disgust 
by the rest of humanity. Anarchy on the sea 
has been denounced with vehemence. The Ger- 
man view of history, the German notion of daily 
life, the German idea of expediency, the German 
ideal of Kultur have been repudiated by every 
nation in the world outside the Central Empires. 
Here lies the assurance of German defeat, the 
assurance of Allied victory. 

Nor can a coalition solely European like 
Mittel-Europa ever beget in the nations of 
America, Asia, and Africa that same confidence 
in its impartiality and disinterested policies as 
the alliance of the British Empire, France, and 

326 



POSITIVE ASSURANCE OF GERMAN DEFEAT 

Italy. The Allies are of themselves a truly inter- 
national alliance: their European members are 
already outvoted and restrained by the existing 
non-European members; their interests can 
never be exclusively European; those of the 
Central Empires can never be anything else. 
The notions of expediency and of desirability 
among the Atlantic Powers must always accord 
with those of the non-European members be- 
cause the alliance is itself non-European in 
character. The notions of expediency which 
the Central Empires can offer its allies in other 
parts of the world will ever be primarily Euro- 
pean. Here lies the significance of the intense 
moral reprobation of Germany by all countries 
outside the ring of the Central Empires, which 
makes her future international position almost 
resemble isolation. The physical location of the 
Central Empires, plus the difficulty created by 
their methods of government and administra- 
tion, the dislike of their premises of statecraft, 
the frank disapprobation of ruthlessness, erect 
something like an insurmountable barrier be- 
tween them and the rest of the world. The vic- 
tory of the Allies is not only assured, but per- 
manent. It rests upon forces international in 
character, upon associations primarily non- 
European, upon interests significantly moral. It 
rests upon realities which neither armies nor 
navies can assail, which war cannot destroy nor 
victory create. 

The Atlantic Powers, now allied for the prose- 
cution of the war, cannot, however, too promptly 

327 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

and conclusively repudiate any fictitious and 
unreal internationalism which proposes to in- 
stitute councils, courts, and executives in which 
the Central Powers shall take their seats as 
equals immediately on the ending of the war. 
In the long run, no doubt, a true international 
council will receive on equal footing all inde- 
pendent nations of all continents, and until that 
moment we shall not have achieved theoretical 
perfection. But for a time, perhaps for a long 
time, the new internationalism must exclude the 
Central Empires. The new league of nations can 
accept only powers whose word can be depended 
upon, whose observation of agreements solemnly 
made can be counted upon. It is a league of 
nations not only equal in right, but equal in 
trust. None can be accepted as members who 
have officially denied the reality of international 
honor, who have gloried in the breach of solemn 
treaties, who have announced their sufficiency as 
lawgivers for themselves and for the rest of the 
world. The international counterpoise to the 
Central Powers, by which their ruthless acts may 
be nullified and controlled, must rigidly exclude 
them from its councils and refuse to be trapped 
by specious pleas of equality and of theoretical 
international right. The essence of internation- 
alism is law, honesty, trustworthiness. Excluded 
from the new league, the Central Empires are 
foiled and defeated and victory for the Allies 
assured. The moral law is inexorable. There 
must be no paltering between victory and the 
defeat of the Central Empires, no hesitation 

328 



POSITIVE ASSURANCE OF GERMAN DEFEAT 

about their exclusion from the new fellowship 
of nations until such time as by general consent 
their trustworthiness has been demonstrated and 
their sincere repentance proved. No defeat 
could be more complete, none as humiliating, 
none as permanent. Such a measure is entirely 
consistent with the high moral stand taken by 
the Allies; indeed, our moral judgment exacts 
it from us. 

There be those who will insist that the new 
internationalism worse belies its name than the 
old, but they will be wrong. The old interna- 
tionalism was dominated beyond hope by the 
six European powers, whose decisions had been 
and were still commonly actuated by European 
interests, of which all non-European nations were 
only nominal members without real voice on 
issues of consequence. We shall substitute for 
it a league from which some European powers 
will be excluded, but whose basis will be for the 
first time international, because not exclusively 
European, in which decisions respecting the 
non-European powers may be decided on their 
merits, and in which the European interests of 
the non-European members will for the first 
time receive adequate attention. We shall still 
be short of theoretical perfection, but an anoma- 
lous and fictitious internationalism behind which 
the two European coalitions masqueraded will 
have been changed for a veritable league of 
nations, still incomplete and imperfect, but based 
at last upon alignments and dispositions inter- 
continental and intra-national, upon an open 

329 



THE WINNING OP THE WAR 

proclamation of the sanctity and obligation of 
international law, not as a case law of the Euro- 
pean admiralty courts, but as a consistent body 
of principles. We shall exchange fictions for 
realities, diplomacy for law, expediency for jus- 
tice, bargaining for impartiality. Let us not 
cavil because all realities cannot at once be com- 
prehended, nor because some nations have thor- 
oughly outlawed themselves by public denials 
of the expediency and reality of international 
relationship. That, too, is a reality, to be dealt 
with as such. 



XXIII 

THE INVINCIBLE ENTENTE 

THE future of democracy and of civilization 
will be safe, whatever happens in Europe, 
so long as close co-operation and friendly under- 
standing continue among the United States, 
the British Empire, France, Italy, and the 
principal South American nations. If the 
understanding can be extended to Japan the 
coalition will be infinitely more powerful. If 
that can eventually not be continued upon 
a basis mutually agreeable, the coalition 
will not be seriously weakened. Nothing re- 
sembling an alliance in the old sense is needed, 
no treaty or written constitution, no executive 
or legislative sessions are imperative. No 
nation need abate one jot of its sovereignty 
or sacrifice a tittle of its freedom of action. 
Nothing more is essential than that they shall 
act in concert where their interests are 
mutual, and that they shall bear with one 
another's difficulties in those relationships where 
the mutuality of interest is not yet entirely 
clear. 

The offensive and defensive position of the 

22 331 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

Atlantic Powers 1 is commanding and invincible. 
They include the strong Atlantic nations of Eu- 
rope, easily capable of self-defense once their 
true strategic frontiers are assured them. They 
already hold in their hands the control of the 
Channel, of the North Sea, of the Atlantic ap- 
proaches to Europe, of the entire Mediterranean, 
and the route around Africa. The American 
members of the coalition control with ease and 
finality the entire Western Hemisphere. The 
French colonial empire, the great British pos- 
sessions in Egypt, the South African Union, 
control the African continent. Thus the three 
strong Atlantic nations of Europe, Great Britain, 
France, and Italy, would associate themselves 
with the whole of the Western Hemisphere, 
with the continent of Africa, with the continent 
of Australia, with one of the most important 
states in Asia, India, and with the bulk of the 
great positions on the ocean waterways. Such 
vast areas of land, such millions of people, such 
extraordinary resources, have never before been 
combined within the memory of man. It is not 
too much to predict that such an entente will 
be literally invincible, its defensive position un- 
assailable, and its offensive strength great beyond 
all possibility of need. 

Nor is it to be forgotten that its component 
parts will not be the nations who entered into 
this war, but the nations who propose to win it. 

1 This name is at once more comprehensive and descriptive than 
the term "the Allies" and contrasts better with "the Central 
Powers," "the Central Empires." 

332 



THE INVINCIBLE ENTENTE 

There will be a new British Empire, coherently 
organized for the first time, with a central execu- 
tive and a central legislature capable of effective 
action. If the federation of the British Isles 
themselves can be perfected, the work of the 
present Imperial Parliament restricted to Eng- 
land and Wales, and Home Rule instituted in 
Scotland and in Ireland, the most difficult issues 
of local government and administration will 
have been solved, and in particular the much- 
mooted question of Irish Home Rule will be 
settled beyond a peradventure. Ireland would 
then hold to the Imperial council precisely the 
same position that England itself would have 
and would have with England no direct admin- 
istrative or legislative connection whatever. The 
financial, administrative, and legislative assist- 
ance which the Irish people may for some dec- 
ades require before their government can be 
placed upon a self-sustaining basis, they would 
receive from the Imperial administration and 
legislature, in which not only England, but also 
Scotland and the great self-governing dominions 
would sit. So, too, would the problems of India 
be solved. No doubt that great country would 
become an integral part of the British Empire 
with its own representatives in the Imperial 
council and legislature, receiving such military 
and administrative aid as it required from the 
Empire as a whole and not from England, owing 
still its allegiance to the crown, but receiving 
no longer practical government from the island 
of Great Britain itself. Thus, too, would be 

333 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

solved the relations, long difficult, between the 
dominions themselves with one another and with 
the mother country. If the war has in all prob- 
ability created a new European unit in the Cen- 
tral Empires, it has beyond all doubt created a 
new international unit in the British Empire, 
capable of a degree of co-operation never feasible 
before, resting upon a completeness of under- 
standing and loyalty never even thought possible 
in past decades by the majority of conservative 
statesmen. If the solidarity of Central Europe 
is a possibility, the solidarity of the British 
Empire is beyond all question a fact. If the 
creation of the one by the war and by the col- 
lapse of Russia has strikingly altered the diplo- 
matic and international situation in Europe it- 
self, the creation of the other by the war has 
none the less erected in the international situ- 
ation a more than capable counterpoise. The 
magic performed once by Bismarck in the case 
of the German Empire, where the assurance of 
continuous and friendly co-operation between a 
number of hitherto suspicious units erected at 
once a new international power, has been re- 
peated. The gain in strength and in cohesion 
of the British Empire will be no less conspicuous 
and no less potent. 

All of these entities will stand forth at the 
close of the war far different in administrative 
and commercial organization than when they 
entered it. In 1914 the administrative co- 
operation of Germany was far more complete 
and effective than in any of the Allied states, 

334 



THE INVINCIBLE ENTENTE 

the industrial administration far better organized 
and more competent. Superiority in both gave 
the German army immense power in the first 
years of the war and still makes it unduly for- 
midable. But the war itself is erasing with 
finality that superiority. At its end the Atlan- 
tic Powers will have attained an administrative 
efficiency and an industrial co-operation which 
will equal, if it does not surpass, that of Germany, 
and which will easily be superior to anything 
of which Austria-Hungary, the Balkans, or Rus- 
sia may be capable for three generations. This 
is a fact of the utmost consequence, a safeguard 
for democracy in the future which defeat could 
not alter. 

The new entente will consist, moreover, en- 
tirely of states highly developed in administra- 
tion and industry. There will be among them 
no laggards, no dead weights, no millstones to 
hang around the necks of the leaders. The 
Central Empires consist at present of one state 
of extraordinary capacity in administration and 
industry, of another state far less capable in 
both, of a third state — Hungary — far below 
Austria in her industrial and administrative 
competence. Their allies, the Balkans, Turkey, 
and, if it be possible, Russia, are among the 
least competent and capable of all European and 
Western nations, states which must develop for 
a generation before they can exert a military, 
industrial, or administrative force of importance 
in the international arena. To compare with 
them, the Atlantic Powers possess already the 

335 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

powerful administrative entities of Great Brit- 
ain, France, Italy, the United States, Brazil, 
Argentina, Chile, Canada, South Africa, Aus- 
tralia. These are already highly developed, all 
of them of greater economic importance than 
Austria-Hungary, and even the least capable of 
the South American nations administratively 
better organized than the Balkan states and 
with a future more thoroughly assured. The 
Atlantic Powers is the co-operation of equals; 
the Central Empires consist of equals and slaves. 
In the hands of the Atlantic Powers will be ab- 
solutely the greatest aggregation of capital hith- 
erto accumulated by the civilized nations of the 
world. Before the war Great Britain, France, and 
the United States possessed the great accumula- 
tions of wealth. They will still possess them at 
its close. Whatever their expenses or losses, 
whatever the gain to Germany by plunder, by 
rapine, or by indemnities, nothing can change 
that great fact that the world's capital and the 
world's financial fabric are owned and controlled 
by the new allies. The whole financial structure 
of international trade has long centered at Lon- 
don. There, too, has been the control of the 
world's insurance and brokerage business, the 
center of the world's banking and of the world's 
exchange. The world has long been accustomed 
to deal in pounds, shillings, and pence through 
English banking firms, and China, South Amer- 
ica, Africa will not soon learn new habits. Ger- 
many herself is a debtor country, and even should 
the fighting of the war and the cleverness of 

336 



THE INVINCIBLE ENTENTE 

German financiers perform the astounding mir- 
acle of confiscating this vast indebtedness, for 
it is hardly conceivable that the Germans might 
really pay it, the Central Empires will still re- 
main fundamentally a debtor state. Austria- 
Hungary, the Balkans, Turkey, Russia, all of 
them are not only legally, but economically 
debtor states, not possessed of the necessary 
capital for their own development, and not 
probably able to become possessed of it within 
a generation. All of them derived their capital 
investment from the new allies and are at present 
debtors in vast amounts to Great Britain, France, 
and the United States, and, unless they repudiate 
it with that lack of morality which they have so 
recently displayed, they will be compelled to pay 
vast sums in the future to the new associates, 
exceeding far any indemnity which they might 
consider imposing upon them. 

The economic strength of the new entente will 
be astounding. It will control a literal monopoly 
of the world's supply of cotton, rubber, and wool. 
The bulk of the copper deposits at present known 
are within its areas; the greater part of the coffee 
used is grown upon its land. In its domains will 
be three out of four of the truly great established 
industrial fabrics of the world; four out of five 
of the world's great agricultural areas; all of 
the world's great meat-raising areas. These are 
at present the only ones which can profitably 
compete on a natural economic basis. Within 
the entente, too, are vast areas which can be 
developed in North and South Africa, fertile, 

337 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

perfect in climate, adjacent to the ^reat Euro- 
pean markets. 

The entente will also control the majority of 
the world's great deposits of iron, coal, and the 
other valuable minerals. They possess already 
three out of four of the world's considerable in- 
dustrial plants capable of making steel and steel 
products; two out of three of the world's ship- 
building plants, each much larger than that of 
Germany. It must not be forgotten that the 
world is in time of peace a living organism, whose 
vital parts are economic, industrial, and finan- 
cial, social, rather than military and adminis- 
trative. In the last resort the strength of an 
alliance depends upon its industrial area and its 
industrial development, and between the two 
ententes — that of Central Europe, of the Atlan- 
tic Powers — there can be literally no comparison 
whatever. In the long run the latter must pre- 
vail. Only one thing can prevent it, a failure 
to co-operate, the creation of misunderstandings. 

It is a remarkable and will be a significant 
fact that the new entente is economically self- 
sufficing even in a world primarily interdepen- 
dent. It is no longer economically possible for 
a single nation to be self-sufficing. All nations 
depend for their profit upon the interchange of 
commodities over a wide area, upon the use of 
raw materials which they do not themselves 
possess, and upon the sale to other countries of 
more manufactured goods or raw materials than 
they can themselves consume. The Central Em- 
pires will not be less dependent upon such a 

338 



THE INVINCIBLE ENTENTE 

type of trade than will the new entente, but the 
latter will be able to carry it on profitably be- 
tween its own members. It can itself use all it 
produces, it can produce all it needs. It pos- 
sesses within its own area the raw materials 
indispensable for manufacture and for life. It 
can produce in its own industrial organizations 
all of the luxuries, all of the necessities. Not 
so the Central Empires. They will be com- 
pletely dependent upon the new entente for a 
supply of wool, for it is not possible to make 
clothing out of all wool that grows on the backs 
of sheep. The great wool-growing areas are 
apparently created by nature and are somewhere 
near the sea. The Central Empires do not 
possess even one. The world's great supply of 
rubber, again, will not be within their reach 
nor of any territory they can touch. Cotton is 
not at present grown within the area of the new 
Pan-Germany, although it is possible that in 
Mesopotamia a sufficient supply may in time 
be produced. The free nitrates are in the hands 
of the new allies, but the Germans may be able 
to produce enough from the air to rid themselves 
of that monopoly. Coffee, it may be, they can 
secure. Tea they certainly can provide over- 
land from Asia. Copper is a more difficult prob- 
lem, but it is possible that it can be met. These 
great problems will require solution by the Cen- 
tral Empires. They are already solved for the 
Allies. In the reality of the solution lies com- 
mercial prosperity and the economic future of 
any nation or alliance. That of the Allies is 

339 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

assured, that of the Central Empires is yet to 
be attained. Nor can any victory in Europe 
attain it. But no defeat which the Allies may 
suffer in Europe can destroy their domination 
of the world's economic fabric. 

The strategic unity of the new entente is 
assured by the Atlantic Ocean and not by terri- 
torial dispositions in Europe. It will possess a 
minimum of territory accessible to the German 
army, a maximum of strength with which to 
defend it. Its resources in men will surpass those 
of the Central Empires, its economic resources 
necessary for the prosecution of war will be 
greatly in excess of its possible enemies. Its 
own vital dispositions, on the contrary, will be 
upon the sea, will be defensible with ease, and 
will not be open to any attack by the truly 
powerful arm of the Central Empires, their army. 
The contact of its members with each other 
can in no sense be destroyed by any measures 
which a militant Germany may undertake in 
Europe. In the sea power will be its one con- 
necting link and its indispensable factor. We shall 
have in the future, it is possible, a military power 
based upon Central Europe and a sea power 
based upon the Atlantic. 

Indisputably in the hands of the new entente, 
beyond the power of any German offensive to 
destroy, will be the control of the world's com- 
munications. Never has sea power been as im- 
portant as to-day. To be sure, the Germans are 
right that, so far as military operations in Eu- 
rope are concerned, its old potency was destroyed 

340 



THE INVINCIBLE ENTENTE 

by the railroad and telegraph. No longer will 
it be possible for navies directly to affect the 
issue of campaigns in Central Europe. No 
longer will campaigns be fought in places which 
navies can reach. Never again will the sea power 
control Europe of itself. As the area of trade 
in the world has expanded, as the very continents 
themselves have become countries and the inter- 
change of the world's goods proceeded until each 
country expects to utilize those of all countries 
and to exchange its own goods with all countries 
in return, so the sea power as a means of com- 
munication between continents has achieved an 
importance which it never possessed as the 
means of communication between European na- 
tions. That it could possess only so long as the 
overland communication in Europe was more 
difficult than the roundabout communication 
by sea, but the railroads can never make less 
necessary sea communication between North 
America and Europe, between Europe and Asia, 
or Europe and Africa. The control of the sea, 
therefore, is immensely more important than 
ever before. The new entente will control it 
absolutely. The old weaknesses of the sea power 
will no longer exist; a new strength has been 
introduced into its dispositions and a new im- 
portance has been vested in them. However 
strong the Central Empires may be upon land, 
their weakness upon the sea is indisputable. 
No victory in Europe can ever change it short 
of the destruction of France and the invasion 
and conquest of England itself. 

341 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

A great deal of nonsense has been written 
about the freedom of the seas, about the inter- 
nationalization of the seas. It is for the most 
part nothing but German propaganda and aims 
at the destruction of British sea power and the 
ascendency of Germany. It means the destruc- 
tion of the old dispositions on the sea and the 
substitution for them of new created in the in- 
terest of the Central Empires. No such freedom 
of the seas, no such internationalization, can be 
tolerated. The sea power of Great Britain will 
be in no sense diminished by the war nor by the 
new entente. It will be on the contrary perpet- 
uated and strengthened. Far from wishing to 
change its present dispositions, the new allies 
will strengthen and improve them by the addi- 
tion of their own navies and merchant ma- 
rines and by the addition of their positions on 
the land. The completeness of the new sea 
power will internationalize it not by fiat nor 
with any intent to destroy and weaken the 
merchant marine, fleet, or strategic position of 
any member of the new entente, but by the fact 
that the Atlantic Powers combine the great sea 
powers of the world through the new under- 
standing created by the war. The completeness 
of the control will be invincible and astounding. 
Not only will the great merchant fleets and 
navies of the world be brought together into 
one harmonious whole, but the strategic water- 
ways, the great ports, the land positions of any 
value to the sea power, and in addition the 
sources of supply of the materials which the 

342 



THE INVINCIBLE ENTENTE 

world wishes to reach by sea — all will be in the 
control of the new entente. The sea power will 
be internationalized by the fact that its disposi- 
tions will be for the first time truly intercon- 
tinental and intra-national, and will hence have 
a truly international sanction. 

The old sea power was vulnerable because 
its basis was too narrow. England stood alone 
as an island power, dependent upon her fleet, 
and seeking protection for the great ocean 
waterways she controlled in island positions for 
the most part difficult to reach by land power. 
She was thus unaided by land power and fearful 
ever to depend upon its continued assistance. 
The greatest difficulty which her statesmen had 
to meet was the fact that her dependence for 
food and raw material upon the outside world 
necessarily forced upon her in the old days a 
close relationship with the land powers of Eu- 
rope which for other reasons she would have pre- 
ferred not to create. Land power was the en- 
emy of sea power, yet the tragic fact of England's 
economic weakness forced the sea power con- 
tinually to create alliances and arrangements 
with land powers which the sea power alone 
could not defend. A really independent policy 
was difficult to pursue. The burden to be car- 
ried by the sea power was already extremely 
heavy. The only strong position in England's 
hands was the Channel, and her great chain of 
dependencies was exceedingly vulnerable and 
depended in each case upon the strength of its 
weakest link. It thus seemed possible to the 

343 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

Germans that the breaking of the link in the 
Channel, or even the necessary concentration 
of the English fleet in the North Sea in order to 
thwart Germany, would effectively destroy the 
reality of England's ocean empire and therefore 
throw the sea power into Germany's hands. 
One victory alone in the North Sea might 
suffice to change all dispositions in the oceans of 
the world. It could under the old regime be 
prevented only by an alliance between England, 
France, and Russia, by an alliance of the sea 
power with land power which forced upon the 
sea power many burdens which the sea power 
itself could not carry. 

The new entente will bear them with ease 
because the old burden forced upon the sea 
power by its land position and by the weakness 
of the strategic dispositions of a sea power 
dependent upon the sea alone will now be 
corrected. Great Britain's position in the Med- 
iterranean was previously dependent upon Gi- 
braltar, Malta, and Suez; but Gibraltar could 
be reached by land and the Suez Canal destroyed 
by an army. Now Gibraltar will be protected by 
Morocco on the African shore. Naples, Sicily, 
Bizerta will sustain the position at Malta and 
render it invulnerable. The Italians in Tripoli 
will protect the Suez Canal and Egypt. So 
throughout the world the land positions from 
which the sea power's control could have been 
assailed are now in the hands of her new allies. 
The Channel, the North Sea, the Atlantic 
Ocean, the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Mexico, 

34* 



THE INVINCIBLE ENTENTE 

the Pacific will all be definitively in the hands 
of the new allies. The road from one ocean to 
another is theirs; the Suez Canal, the Panama 
Canal in particular, the two gateways of oceans, 
are owned by them. The Cape of Good Hope, 
Cape Horn, the Falkland Islands, Argentina, 
Chile will assure the control of the passages 
around Africa and South America. Singapore 
is the key of the Indian Ocean and of the China 
Sea. The Philippines and Hong-Kong control 
the approaches from the Pacific to China, while 
the crossing of the Pacific is controlled by islands 
in the possession of the United States or Great 
Britain. If Japan maintains its friendly under- 
standing with the present Allies their position 
in the Pacific will be invulnerable beyond a 
doubt. 

Nor can the Germans in any way assail these 
dispositions with success. The German fleet 
itself will of course now secure complete control 
of the Baltic, the Black Sea, Constantinople, 
and, it may be, with the Austrians at Saloniki, 
the iEgean. But they are easily denied access 
to the great ocean highways. England itself, 
the French coast, Belgium, and the harbors of 
Holland will not be in their hands. The Ger- 
man fleet will be behind the great barrier and 
incapable of breaking through it, for navigation 
around the British Isles is too perilous to be at- 
tempted on a great scale or in all weathers. 
The Austrian, German, and Russian fleets in 
the eastern Mediterranean, if such there come 
to be, will also be held by the vast strength of 

315 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

the combined British, French, and Italian posi- 
tions around Sicily and the neck of the Mediter- 
ranean. Always Germany will be hampered by 
the inability to operate from a base on the 
open ocean, from the necessity always of pass- 
ing to it through waterways controlled by its 
enemies beyond a peradventure. If powerful 
fleets should be sent forth by Central Europe, 
they would always be operating away from their 
base without the possibility of an assurance of 
a return to it. They would have delivered them- 
selves over into the hands of their enemies, 
should they concentrate against them. When 
they should arrive at the great objective which 
they wished to assail, they would there find] 
waiting for them not merely a British fleet, but 
the resident fleets of the United States, of South 
American nations, the Italian and French fleets 
in the Mediterranean, the Japanese fleet in the 
Pacific. Nor is it to be supposed that the 
Central Empires can ever contest the control 
of the sea from any land position which they may 
win in the present war. They cannot continue 
to live in the world in prosperity without access 
to the sea, nor can they obtain that access 
without in some way or other coming to terms 
with the present entente. The Allies possess 
something of the utmost importance which the 
Germans must have. For it they will pay and 
must be made to pay with the one thing the 
Allies need: the assurance of the safety in Eu- 
rope of the European members of the entente. 
The homogeneity of the new entente will be 

346 



THE INVINCIBLE ENTENTE 

not less conspicuous than its strength. All its 
members are already democratic governments, 
not merely in name, but in fact. Moreover, 
they understand the words democracy, liberty, 
and law in the same sense. Behind them lies 
something approaching a unity of tradition; in 
them all predominates the Anglo-Saxon tradi- 
tion of government and law, the British form 
of government in the British Empire and in 
France, American presidential government in 
North and South America. Upon international 
law, upon international ethics, upon the sanctity 
of international agreement, they are at one. 
There can be in an administrative and govern- 
mental sense no discord among the associates; 
no misunderstanding should arise from their 
failure to speak a language mutually under- 
stood. The strength with which this invests 
the new entente can scarcely be overestimated. 
The old European alliances were based upon ter- 
ritorial lines, strategic locations, and common 
hatreds rather than upon common beliefs and 
common objectives. They were framed for ag- 
gression rather than for defense, or at the least 
for defense against the sort of aggression which 
the new entente definitely reprobates and dis- 
owns. Never consistent, scarcely ever with a 
common basis of ideals or policies, hardly ever 
possessing common notions of law and admin- 
istrative expediency, it was always difficult to 
predicate common action beyond a minimum 
point. The members of the alliance themselves 
commonly distrusted one another only in less 

23 347 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

degree than their enemies. The Russian Revo- 
lution, destroying the old diplomatic possibili- 
ties and the old strategic formula, has made 
possible at last a real international alliance upon 
the basis of democracy and of internationalism 
among nations possessed of interests truly mu- 
tual, of common ideals already in existence, of 
common aims whose continuance is possible to 
predicate. 

So • long as Great Britain and France were 
aligned with Russia, there was always an un- 
natural element in the Entente. Its basis was 
hostility to Germany rather than common in- 
terests and ideals which its members wished to 
promote. Russia and Great Britain were at 
swords' points in Asia; France and Great Britain 
feared the advent of Russia in the Mediter- 
ranean scarcely less than that of Germany in 
the North Sea. They are both well rid of the 
old Russia and of the old diplomacy which her 
existence fostered and made necessary. What- 
ever the outcome of the Russian Revolution, 
whatever it takes from the Allies or adds to the 
Germans, it has made feasible an international 
alliance which can be consistent with itself, 
truly democratic. If the newer Russia should 
be able to reorganize upon the basis of a real 
democracy and renounce the old ambitions of 
the dynasty, it could then be joyfully received 
by the present Allies into association. Whatever 
happens, the old inconsistency is gone. Eng- 
land and France as democratic nations, allied 
for the safety of civilization with the worst 

348 



THE INVINCIBLE ENTENTE 

autocracy of Europe, was an inconsistency which 
lent color to the Pan-Germanic interpretation 
of history and gave verity to charges of self- 
interest and aggression. So long as dynastic 
Russia remained a member of the coalition the 
old Allies could not be truly disinterested, could 
never whole-heartedly throw against Germany 
their full strength and inflict upon the Central 
Empires the greatest measure of defeat of which 
they were capable. Upon that the Pan-Germans 
have always definitely counted. As they saw 
Europe, with Russia on one side of Germany, 
vast in its millions and in its potential resources, 
and on the other side an England and France 
always growing relatively less powerful in their 
relation to the Central Empires and to Russia, 
there was a distinct point beyond which it was 
not to French and British interest to allow Ger- 
many to be weakened. She was their own fun- 
damental defense against Russia. Russia was 
again the only nation in Europe able to profit 
decidedly from a maximum Allied victory. The 
most that could be won by Great Britain and 
France was the strengthening of the defensive 
position they already held. Only Russia could 
add to her resources or to her territory. For 
long years there was incredulity in Berlin over 
the cession to Russia of Constantinople. In- 
deed, they believed that Great Britain and 
France were more than likely to prefer an ex- 
tension of Austrian influence in the Balkans 
than of Russian. The fetters upon the hands 
of democracy have now been struck away. If 

349 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

it is possible for the Allies to win a maximum 
victory, they will not be restrained in their 
use of it by any fears of aggrandizing the old 
Russia. 

It must also be remembered that the cohesive 
power of Central Europe is defensive, diplomatic, 
and political rather than administrative, eco- 
nomic, and social. The fear of Russia was also 
the most potent weapon of the leaders in secur- 
ing that co-operation and cohesion, the real evi- 
dence which they could show of a necessity for 
militarism and secret diplomacy. It will after 
the war perhaps remain true that the interna- 
tional unity of Central Europe lies rather in 
the fear of outside interference than in a simi- 
larity of purposes and ideas in regard to internal 
affairs. Co-operation among its members in a 
war for defense is easy to predicate. It will be 
difficult in time of peace when the local diver- 
gencies and old jealousies and antipathies, now 
set free by the Russian Revolution and the 
results of the war itself, may find plenty of 
time and opportunity in which to develop. If 
the strength of the Allies is greater in peace than 
in war, that of the Central Empires will be in- 
finitely less in peace than it is at present. So 
long as Russia existed, the unity of the Central 
Empires was unassailable in peace as in war. 
So long as this war endures in all probability 
the solidarity of Mittel-Europa is assured, but 
let peace once come and the cement of fear will 
be removed. Victory will bring into relief the 
democratic forces, never strong enough to effect 

350 



THE INVINCIBLE ENTENTE 

unity during war, but amply powerful enough, 
once independence seems assured, to undertake 
reforms which may alter in significant ways the 
administrative constitution of the Central Em- 
pires and not improbably rob them of the greater 
part of their offensive strength. It is this dis- 
tinction between the defensive and the offensive 
strength of the Central Empires which so many 
people fail to remember. Because their unity 
cannot be predicated upon certain social and 
local issues, many jump to the conclusion that 
their unity in time of war is equally assailable, 
while those who find that their unity stands the 
test of war forget that it may not stand the test 
of peace. Impermeable to defeat, victory may 
destroy it. 



XXIV 

THE LOGIC OF VICTORY ON THE WEST FRONT 

THE British and the French very early con- 
cluded victory not worth having without 
the possession of Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, and 
an indemnity for the destruction already ac- 
complished in French territory. Neither be- 
lieved peace possible unless they themselves had 
physical possession of this territory at the end 
of the war. To be forced to ransom it by the 
sacrifice of colonies in Africa would be distasteful 
in the extreme, even if expedient. Neither be- 
lieved that the Germans would surrender them 
for even the whole French colonial empire in 
Africa. Hence the military effort of Great Brit- 
ain and France was almost certain to be ex- 
pended on the West Front because nowhere else 
had either prime objectives to achieve which a 
military campaign was needed to attain. Victory 
on the West Front must win for them all other 
objectives, but defeat there would, so far as 
they were concerned, mean the loss of the war. 
Such logic was inexorable, and for this reason 
every rod of ground gained has in France seemed 
to be an achievement. If the Germans must be 

352 



LOGIC OF VICTORY ON THE WEST FRONT 

slowly pushed out of France by main force, 
every step won was a victory. If they could 
be continuously expelled, however slowly, the 
certainty of victory was clear. If the General 
Staff could indicate certain definite gains of ter- 
ritory desired and could then attain them, the 
expulsion of Germans from France was only a 
question of time, of munitions, and of men. 
Such premises made the war on the West Front 
all-important and every other military opera- 
tion necessarily subordinate and unimportant. 
Victory could only be won there, because defeat 
there and victory elsewhere would be tanta- 
mount to British and to French defeat every- 
where. 

Germany held at the outbreak of the war 
what was called the offensive position in Eu- 
rope. Between Germany and France there were 
two great avenues of approach, the one on the 
north through Belgium, the other on the east 
of France through Alsace and Lorraine. Both 
furnished broad areas in which armies might 
operate with comparative ease, but of the two 
Belgium was broader and simpler. Through 
both German armies had successfully reached 
Paris; through both French armies had suc- 
cessfully invaded Germany. Throughout the 
history of the two countries they had fought 
each other for the possession of these strategic 
gateways. The importance to other countries 
of the position and attitude of France and Ger- 
many to each other gave these roads between 
them international significance. The more north- 

353 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

ern, Belgium, had also great importance for 
England. It contained Antwerp, the River 
Scheldt, and the harbor of Ostend. From Hol- 
land and Belgium the invasion of England had 
been considered feasible; from the French coast 
it had many times been proved impossible be- 
cause the rough sea and the contrary winds made 
difficult the crossing of the Channel. In the 
military sense, therefore, the English frontier 
began at Liege. After the Channel was passed 
the invasion became a fact and the battle for 
England began at once; the defense was over; 
the approaches lost. Alsace-Lorraine was the 
stronger of the two positions so far as an assault 
by France upon Germany was concerned. It 
placed the French upon the Rhine ready to 
operate at once against southern Germany. 
From it they might pass down the Danube and 
assault Vienna or cross the Rhine and march 
northeast into Prussia. The interrelation of the 
two strategic points was also important: Alsace 
outflanked Belgium in some circumstances and 
was itself outflanked by Belgium in others; 
everything depended upon the possession of 
both by the same country. If not in the same 
hands, they tended to neutralize each other, 
though the neutrality of Belgium did not pre- 
vent the use by France of Alsace-Lorraine against 
Germany. 

This offensive position was won by France 
in the seventeenth century under Louis XIV., 
was used by Napoleon to conquer Europe, and 
was retained by France in 1814, despite the very 

354 



LOGIC OF VICTORY ON THE WEST FRONT 

clear concept in the minds of the English, the 
Prussians, and the Russians of the danger of 
leaving it in her hands. Talleyrand, however, 
made it clear that to deprive her of Alsace 
would mean the continuation of the war. That, 
the allies in 1814 did not desire. They preferred 
to rely upon the well-known incapacity of Louis 
XVIII. , Charles X., and of all other members of 
the legitimate royal family to hinder France 
from making use of the offensive position. They 
also concluded that the attempt to frame a new 
Government would occupy the French for many 
years to come. And so it proved. Not until 
the middle of the century, when Napoleon III. 
had revived the Empire, did it become clear 
that a man sat upon the French throne, able to 
use this offensive position — and willing. 

When, therefore, the Franco-Prussian War re- 
sulted in the demand by Prussia for the cession 
of Alsace-Lorraine, the other European countries 
were on the whole glad to see France lose it. The 
stronger country (as they supposed) lost the 
stronger position, which fell into the hands of the 
weaker country, Prussia, whose humiliation at the 
hands of Austria two decades earlier had been piti- 
able. It was not thought that Prussia could use 
it. Then came the great coup d'etat of Bismarck, 
the creation of the German Empire. The ter- 
ritories of many states, whose resources indi- 
vidually were negligible, whose political strength 
as then organized was despicable, were suddenly 
combined into a single state. Their resources 
became collectively formidable, the political 

355 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

power of the new entity great, and its diplomatic 
influence astonishing, especially when wielded by 
so powerful and irresponsible an executive as 
Bismarck had created in the Chancellorship. The 
whole strategic position in Europe had been 
altered in a night and the powers saw that the 
transfer of Alsace-Lorraine had at once made 
the new world power dangerous. 

The neutrality of Belgium had been altered 
by this stroke. In 1870 it had been more than 
easy for Bismarck to promise to forego military 
invasion; such an assault on Paris would have 
been the height of military folly so long as the 
French were in possession of Alsace. They 
could have assailed the flank of the German in- 
vading force with terrific effect. They could 
have waited until it had passed and have thrown 
themselves upon its rear. They could have made 
a direct assault upon Cologne or upon southern 
Germany and have effected the conquest of either 
while the Germans themselves were fighting 
before Paris. Returning as victors, they would 
have unquestionably crushed the Germans on the 
plains of northern France. Still less did France 
desire to use Belgium in 1870. In Lorraine 
she held a far better position, for both defense 
and offense, the rear protected by Belgium, 
whose neutrality was far more useful to her than 
its military occupation could have been. She 
stood already upon the banks of the Rhine, 
while in Belgium she was still far away. In 
1870 the neutrality of Belgium was a fact which 
neither of the combatants wished to challenge, 

356 



LOGIC OF VICTORY ON THE WEST FRONT 

and the violation of which would have cost both 
dear. 

But the moment Alsace fell into German 
hands the neutrality of Belgium ceased to be a 
fact. The Germans might invade it with flank 
and rear protected by Alsace, and might there- 
fore . place themselves at once upon both of 
France's strategic frontiers, especially if they 
were sufficiently prompt to pass through Belgium 
and enter France itself before the French army 
could mobilize. The situation covered by the 
old treaty of 1839 was altered by this change in 
the ownership of Alsace, and was declared, 
therefore, in Germany to have relieved the Ger- 
mans from the necessity of keeping it. In fact, 
while the new situation was different from the 
old, the issue raised was precisely that to which 
the treaty of 1839 was intended to apply— the 
use of Belgium as a military road between France 
and Germany. 

Since 1870 the position of France has been 
dangerous in the extreme. She was, at the out- 
break of this war, vulnerable on both fronts, 
and practically unable to insure an effective de- 
fense. Both of these fronts were, moreover, 
in the hands of a European entity very much 
larger and stronger than France herself. This 
was true in 1871; it was even more true in 
1914. Germany had grown in population until 
it had nearly double the man power of France, 
and its army was obviously double any force 
France could possibly put into the field even 
if every man were put in the trenches. The 

357 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

weaker power saw its two strategic defenses in 
the hands of a power decisively superior in 
strength and possessed of the will to strike. 
Aggression by France against Germany was 
impossible; it could not be undertaken with the 
slightest prospects of success. In a war against 
France alone, Germany could scarcely fail. All 
was made more serious by the rapid growth of 
German population and by the practically sta- 
tionary population of France. Decade by decade 
in the future this disparity would grow even 
greater and the danger of France become con- 
sequently more serious. 

To consider the ending of the war without the 
cession of Alsace-Lorraine and Belgium, the 
Allies realized at the outset, was formally to 
recognize the domination of Europe by Germany, 
to consent to their own defeat before it became 
a fact. 

The mere size and economic strength of Mittel- 
Europa with two such strategic positions in its 
hands would alone outweigh France and Eng- 
land in the European balance. Both would be 
robbed of any real chance of adequate defense 
against future aggression. To fail to reconquer 
the lost provinces meant that England and 
France would become in Europe proper powers 
of the second rank only in potential force, unable 
to veto what Germany might demand diplo- 
matically because without the strength in the 
last resort to resist by arms. Italy and Spain 
were both too weak, too badly placed with re- 
lation to the field of war in France, to be able 

358 



LOGIC OF VICTORY ON THE WEST FRONT 

to restore the European balance. If Germany 
should retain Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine — it 
might be that the retention of Alsace alone 
would suffice — there could be no European bal- 
ance of power. Germany would by reason of 
fact, by the possession of the offensive position, 
by size of population, by the extent of her 
economic power, dominate the continent. 

For the United States, Alsace-Lorraine in 
French hands, Belgium neutral, and the strength 
of the British sea power unimpaired are scarcely 
less essential than for Great Britain and France. 
These are our first line of defense. Once past 
them, the Germans are within our defenses 
and the battle for the country itself begins. 
The isolation of this country from Europe is a 
fallacy now exploded. That an army of great 
size can be transported across the ocean and 
maintained adequately has been demonstrated. 
The United States itself is about to undertake 
such an operation. Our coast is difficult to de- 
fend, easy to approach. A thousand miles lies 
vulnerable to a landing army anywhere. The 
Panama Canal may easily be captured. The 
West Indies, New Orleans, Galveston are en- 
tirely defenseless. The Philippines and Hawaii 
would be easily lost. A dominant Germany 
able to deal with Great Britain and France 1 
can easily threaten the United States and compel 
our submission. Conquest of this country even 

1 This provision is vital and must never be forgotten. It is the 
essential common interest we possess with France and Great 
Britain against Germany: all three nations are indispensable to 
one another. 

359 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

so great a power as the Germans like to dream 
of could scarcely attempt with success. Still 
less could even such a Germany hope to retain 
control. But the international position of the 
United States in a world dominated by Germany, 
because dominant in Europe, would be singularly 
unfortunate. 

It must not be forgotten that the most valu- 
able privilege of the United States is the right 
to approach Europe by sea. There are our 
greatest markets and sources of supply; there 
are our most valuable customers and our most 
necessary allies. The approach to the outside 
world through the English Channel is not more 
essential to the Germans than the approach of 
the United States through the Channel to Eng- 
land, France, Germany, and Russia. We are 
as definitely outside the European trade area 
as any nation can be and our ability to approach 
it is essential. A dominant Germany in Europe, 
possessed of Alsace-Lorraine, controlling Bel- 
gium, with a fleet challenging the English dom- 
ination of the Channel, could easily threaten, 
if not control, the effective approaches of the 
United States to the commerce of Europe. 

We shall fight our own battle in France, not 
that of the Allies. Our objectives are the same 
as theirs. For us and for them, it is essential 
to destroy German control of France, Alsace- 
Lorraine, and Belgium now and forever. Their 
possession is the essential prerequisite of peace, 
because, without the control of the offensive 
position in the west, France and Great Britain 

360 



LOGIC OF VICTORY ON THE WEST FRONT 

cannot maintain an adequate defensive against 
Germany. The effective fact in the neutrality 
of Belgium is the possession by France of Alsace- 
Lorraine. So long as the Germans remain in 
Alsace, Belgian neutrality can never be assured, 
because the German army can always, if it 
wishes, safely enter Belgium. It must be made 
perilous for the Germans to enter Belgium. 

It must also remain perilous for the German 
fleet to operate in the English Channel. The 
sea power of Great Britain must not be impaired. 
In her hands it is not dangerous to other nations. 
England is an island and must import by sea 
her food and raw materials. She is, therefore, too 
dependent upon the sea power to dare to abuse 
it. Its defensive purposes are too significant to 
be risked by any offensive which the British 
could undertake. They could never win as 
much by it as they might lose. Nor is Great 
Britain able to undertake aggression upon the 
continent. For centuries there has been no 
English standing army in times of peace; since 
the Hundred Years' War, it has been an English 
maxim that it was inexpedient to hold outside 
England territory which force was needed to 
retain. Germany, on the other hand, is a mili- 
tary nation which has always regarded as its 
prime line of defense a great army. She can 
annex territory; she can conquer territory; she 
does possess the means of extending her do- 
minion in Europe even in times of peace. For 
her, therefore, to add to such power the sea 
would put into her hands a weapon capable of 

361 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

offensive use against others. She is not de- 
pendent, as England is, upon the sea power, and 
would, therefore, not be restrained to a- purely 
defensive use of it. Nor shall we forget the ex- 
cellence of British stewardship of the sea in the 
past, the real freedom of the seas in time of 
peace, the effective policing of the sea which 
Great Britain has carried out for three hundred 
years, which has made the freedom of the seas 
almost synonymous with British rule. Until 
the Germans rose to object to it, every nation 
was as dependent upon the use of the seas as 
Germany, but none objected. Shall we transfer 
this stewardship to Germany after what the 
war has shown us of German trustworthiness, 
of the German spirit of mercy and loving- 
kindness? 

The British sea power will be the essential 
European force behind Belgium and Alsace- 
Lorraine in the defense of France and of Europe 
against German domination. It alone, combined 
with a new strategic position for France and 
Italy, can prevent Germany from overrunning 
the whole continent, now that Russia is lost. 
Here is the essential first-line defense of the 
United States. That lost, we are at once thrown 
back upon our own frontier, upon our own 
coast. The Russian Revolution has changed 
the strategic position of the United States and 
has located our military and naval frontier in 
Europe. 



XXV 

THE TRUE MILITARY OBJECTIVE 

HOWEVER invincible we may believe the 
co-operation of the Atlantic Powers to be, 
however certain the future of democracy and of 
civilization in their hands, we must never forget 
that there are still objectives to be won in the 
field, some of them imperative, others eminently 
desirable. But it will be idle for us to plan the 
continuation of the war on the basis of a maxi- 
mum victory which requires either internal as- 
sistance from the Central Empires or a military 
exertion so great as practically to exhaust and 
destroy the European members of the new in- 
ternational coalition. The very keystone of 
defense in the future will be the continued 
strength and solvency of England, France, and 
Italy. We must again proceed on the assumption 
that the German army will continue to possess 
effective offensive strength; that its efficiency 
and its morale will not be diminished or im- 
paired by the continuation of the war; that 
somehow or other the necessary raw material 
to prosecute the war will be found within the 
Central Empires; that somehow or other the 

24 363 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

food question will be solved, at least to that 
point which will prevent any interference with 
the continuation of the war. The loyalty of 
the German people to their Government we 
must also predicate, and beside it place the 
solidarity of the Central Empires and of their 
allies. If we postulate that Scandinavia, Hol- 
land, and Denmark will not aid Germany, we 
shall make an assumption which facts scarcely 
warrant. However firmly we may believe that 
Russia will not actively aid the Central Empires 
nor yet accord economic assistance, we shall 
be most wise to act on the belief that she will 
do both. As for the submarine, we must assume 
its continued activity and the continuation of 
at least the present ratio of losses. Not only 
the logic of the war itself, but also what seemed 
to be before the war broke out the best avail- 
able information, leads to the conclusion that 
these assumptions are probably correct. 

We must consider and admit the weakness of 
the campaign on the West Front. The West 
Front itself possessed no military or strategic 
relation to the other fields of war. Victory there 
could not forestall defeat elsewhere, nor could 
the armies operating there receive more than in- 
direct aid from their own allies. Still less had 
the West Front and its military position any 
immediate relation to the majority of the Allied 
objectives. Disaster there could only defeat 
Germany if the operations should involve so 
large a part of the German army that defeat 
would demoralize and disorganize their whole 

364 



THE TRUE MILITARY OBJECTIVE 

military system. Hence the logic of the con- 
centration of more and more men in France — 
the Allies wished to draw the German army 
there in order that it might be beaten. But the 
finality of the campaign in the west also pre- 
supposed the continued power of the Russian 
army in Poland and in the Balkans. Once the 
latter was disorganized, a crushing defeat of the 
Germans in France could at the most secure the 
objectives in Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine. Of 
themselves these will not result in the control of 
the Italian passes, still less rearrange the Bal- 
kans, expel the Turk, erect a new Poland, and 
take from Germany the Kiel Canal. 

The collapse of Russia made the victory 
which the Allies originally determined to win not 
only impossible, but inexpedient, and most cer- 
tainly incapable of the expected effect. There 
is no use for us to hide our heads like the 
ostrich and deny the facts. The plan for maxi- 
mum victory assumed the revival of the old 
formula, the weakening of Germany and the 
strengthening of Russia. The various territorial 
dispositions to accomplish both depended liter- 
ally upon the continued power and dependability 
of Russia. In her existence, too, lay the safety 
and efficiency of the device of a revolt in the Cen- 
tral Empires. The premise of the Allied settle- 
ment in the Baltic, again, was necessarily a 
strong Russia, hostile to Germany, and forcing, 
consequently, the neutrality of Sweden, Den- 
mark, and Norway. Upon such foundation a 
kingdom of Poland might have been based and 

365 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

the Kiel Canal given to Denmark. But to erect 
a kingdom of Poland now, with the idea that 
it would form an effective buffer state between 
Germany and a nation which seems at present 
to be only too anxious to co-operate with her, 
would merely sacrifice the Poles to no end. We 
should not be their friends, but their deceivers. 

Similarly, upon the strength and existence of 
Russia depended the Allied settlement in the 
Balkans. It rested upon a Russia, hostile to 
the Central Empires, and, with the Black Sea 
and Constantinople in its hands, able to make 
the destruction of the Turkish Empire a reality. 
Italy could then be placed in control of the 
western Balkans. Austria-Hungary could be 
disrupted by her own people. An enlarged 
Serbia could then annex the Slavic peoples of 
Austria-Hungary and the greater part of Mace- 
donia and Bulgaria; a new Rumania could then 
be placed across the Danube; the Greeks might 
be given Thrace. But all those peoples combined 
could surely not defend themselves against resi- 
dent powers as strong as Germany and Austria 
(unless both were reduced indeed) without in- 
stant aid from a resident ally equally powerful. 
The collapse of Russia, therefore, makes the 
expediency of such territorial dispositions in 
eastern Europe and in the Balkans exceedingly 
doubtful for the Allies. They are at best no 
more than methods of strengthening Russia and 
of weakening the Central Empires, depend upon 
the operation of the old formula, and require 
factors now gone forever. 

366 



THE TRUE MILITARY OBJECTIVE 

The reorganization of eastern Europe can no 
longer be the objective of the continuation of 
the war. The Allies will at once achieve a 
unity of purpose by a change of viewpoint from 
the European to the international arena. The 
Atlantic as the effective unit of the new powers 
will end the differences of opinion between them 
as to the necessary objectives. Those which 
they will now espouse are truly and entirely 
defensive and can never be anything else. They 
will immeasurably strengthen the moral case 
of the Allies and will remove elements in the 
situation hitherto inharmonious with it. The dis- 
positions growing out of the relations of Russia 
with Great Britain and France were always in- 
consistent with the case of democracy and with 
the moral stand upon which the Allies entered 
the war, and were, therefore, an assistance to the 
campaign of the Central Empires with their own 
people and a source of division among people of 
the Allied nations. 

With the creation of the entente of the At- 
lantic Powers, the strategic position of their 
European members ceased to depend either for 
safety or international status upon their terri- 
torial positions in Europe alone. France and 
Great Britain, the only western members of 
the old European Entente, were formerly de- 
pendent for defense against Germany upon their 
own strength and territorial power in Europe. 
Inasmuch as both were limited in area and popu- 
lation, since neither had possession of Belgium 
or Alsace-Lorraine — the defensive frontiers of 

367 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

both — it was long ago clear that their real de- 
fense was the existence and strength of Russia. 
They must, however, by their own man power 
hold the western frontier till Russian aid could 
arrive in the east. Now they are the European 
members of an Atlantic coalition, thoroughly 
united and centralized, with supremacy on the 
seas. Its forces can and will operate on the same 
battle-line. The front to be defended is rela- 
tively short compared with its vast man power 
and economic resources. France and Great 
Britain will be no longer dependent upon their 
own man power against Germany. No longer 
will the Italians be entirely dependent upon 
their own army for defense against Austria. 
The armies of the United States, of the British 
Empire, and of South America are and will be 
available. Can it be supposed for a moment 
that this is not a defense immensely stronger 
than the old? The European allies have ex- 
changed a relatively incapable and ill-developed 
country, never dependable, poorly governed, 
ill-organized, for partners more than its equal 
in man power, immensely superior in adminis- 
trative and economic strength, beyond all com- 
parison the moral superiors of the Russian people. 
Have the Allies then lost the war? Is it con- 
ceivable that after such achievements the war 
should be regarded as lost, that their inability 
now to make certain dispositions whose whole 
value consisted in their relation to Russia should 
be counted defeat? They have lost an ally who 
was both a burden and a constant peril. They 

368 



THE TRUE MILITARY OBJECTIVE 

have gained allies whose assistance is thoroughly 
adequate and dependable. The defensive posi- 
tion of Great Britain, France, and Italy is now 
stronger than it has been in decades, stronger 
perhaps than it has ever been. 

If they will be in future dependent upon as- 
sistance from America, they were helpless in the 
past without Russian aid. If the new friends 
must cross the Atlantic, the old ally must as- 
semble an army from great areas of land, and 
must consume far more time before aid could 
be rendered than will the new. The dependence 
of Great Britain and France upon outside as- 
sistance for their primary defense against Ger- 
many is, therefore, not a new fact. They will 
not be in greater danger than before, but in 
less, because their new allies are immensely more 
capable and powerful than the old. The old 
sea power was vulnerable because dependent 
upon European supplies of food, wool, and iron. 
It could always be reached by land power be- 
cause the latter could always cut off its sup- 
plies. It must, therefore, ally itself with con- 
tinental powers adequate to protect its European 
supplies by European land power alone. Herein 
lay the prime necessity from Great Britain's 
point of view for a military balance of power in 
Europe. Her apprehensions of the overweening 
military power of the Central Empires is the 
traditional fear of isolation. But Great Britain, 
France, and Italy need no longer by military 
dispositions in Europe create an economic de- 
fensive in the old sense. They will in the future, 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

as during the war, draw their food and raw 
materials from the non-European supplies of 
their own allies located in other continents, in- 
vulnerable to attack by any European land 
power, however considerable. At the risk of 
tiresome iteration, Great Britain, France, and 
Italy, allied firmly with the United States, the 
British Empire, South America, and Africa, are 
less vulnerable now to the offensive strength of 
the new Central Empires, assuming them at the 
maximum of what they claim, than they were 
in the past generation to the old Germany and 
Austria-Hungary. They need not more pro- 
tection now than before, but less. They have 
not more military objectives to win, but fewer, 
and they are, if anything, less imperative. 

The true defensive and offensive weapon of 
the Atlantic Powers is not armies, but sea power. 
If the Central Empires have achieved military 
supremacy over purely European armies, the 
new coalition controls the sea with a grip which 
the Central Powers will be unable to loosen. 
Moreover, their position is invulnerable to as- 
sault because with it comes not merely supremacy 
in battle fleets and possession of the bulk of the 
world's merchant marine, but in addition the 
truly stupendous advantages of the land posi- 
tions complementary to the old keys to the 
waterways and control of the sources of supply 
which sea power aims to reach. Everywhere the 
new alliance controls not only the communica- 
tions of the Central Empires with the outside 
world, but the outside world itself, access to 

370 



THE TRUE MILITARY OBJECTIVE 

which alone renders those communications valu- 
able. The German fleet is valueless. If it should 
by chance defeat the British fleet, it could not 
destroy the new sea power, because it could not 
to-day by sea power alone bring to terms Amer- 
ica and Asia. For any access to the world's 
trade at all, for not only the right to use the 
seas, but for the privilege of access to the sources 
of supply, they can be and must be forced to 
pay. They will navigate the seas in future on 
their good behavior — in Europe. To think to 
control the Central Empires by means of the 
assistance of their own people is to put ourselves 
into their hands, because they and not we con- 
trol the keys to the situation. But by the sea 
power, we may expect and compel their good 
behavior. They cannot for long dispense with 
rubber, cotton, wool, and copper, of which the 
Atlantic Powers will possess an all but absolute 
monopoly. Here is a weapon, within our own con- 
trol, whose defensive strength will be entirely 
adequate. It can and will in the long run protect 
even the European members of the new coali- 
tion from any armies the Central Empires can put 
into the field. But it can never of itself under- 
take offensive measures against such a European 
coalition and extort concessions from them in 
Europe, nor can it by itself end this war. 

The war must go on in Europe and must be 
fought there by the armies of the Atlantic 
Powers until the maximum security for its Euro- 
pean members is achieved. The true objective 
of the war now lies in the assurance of the nat- 

371 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

ural strategic frontiers of France and Italy in 
Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, Switzerland, the Tren- 
tino, the Isonzo, which will make adequate 
defense against even the Central Empires rela- 
tively simple for the European strength of those 
powers alone. So much we must have. Here, 
too, are the military frontiers of the United 
States and of the British Empire. Once Ger- 
many achieves the conquest of France, she be- 
comes an Atlantic Power herself, is freed from 
her present bonds, and may then with her 
armies and navies undertake the domination of 
the world with expectation of success. The con- 
tinued independence and integrity of France 
and Great Britain is the key to the defense of 
democracy and of civilization. 

So long as the peoples of the Central Empires 
cannot be trusted, these frontiers and the su- 
premacy of the sea must remain in the hands of 
the coalition of the Atlantic Powers. The one 
sustains the other; singly each is vulnerable; 
combined they will be irresistible for offense, 
impregnable for defense. The neutrality of 
Belgium is assured by the military possession 
of Alsace-Lorraine by France; the neutrality of 
Switzerland is guaranteed by the French in 
Alsace-Lorraine and the Italians in the Tren- 
tino; the French rear is defended and the con- 
trol of the Mediterranean assured by the Trentino 
and Trieste in Italian hands. In all probability 
the possession of the Persian Gulf, the control 
of the Syrian coast and of the new kingdom of 
Arabia will be necessary to protect the Suez 

372 



THE TRUE MILITARY OBJECTIVE 

Canal from possible land assaults from Mesopo- 
tamia. The retention of the islands of Rhodes, 
Cyprus, and Crete will become highly desirable 
in order to protect the Mediterranean approaches 
of the Suez Canal. Austria would no doubt 
secure her long-coveted port at Saloniki and 
would open by canal water connections with the 
Danube system which would solve her difficulties 
of outlet. She could, therefore, well afford to 
sacrifice the Adriatic. 

Four things are essential. We must not so 
fight the war in the endeavor to extend our vic- 
tory in Europe nor even to attain physical pos- 
session of these desirable frontiers at the expense 
of the physical, economic, and financial exhaus- 
tion of France, Great Britain, and Italy. Upon 
the continued power, prosperity, and solvency 
of these nations the strength and existence of 
the coalition of the Atlantic Powers literally 
depend. To gain Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine 
by the decimation of French and British man 
power would be to insure defeat, to throw away 
the secure defense which the Atlantic Powers 
can always organize in time, and destroy the 
defensive and aggressive position of the sea 
power against Central Europe. No other defeat 
can be dangerous; none other conclusive. By 
it alone can the Central Empires win more than 
the empty prize of the control of undeveloped 
eastern Europe. In the second place, the war 
must end with the Allied navies intact and their 
merchant marines still numerically superior to 
anything the Central Empires can build. A 

373 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR • 

second Trafalgar could not to-day precipitate a 
second Waterloo. It might fatally weaken the 
British fleet and sacrifice to no end the control 
of the Channel and the consequent guarantee of 
Dutch neutrality against the new Germany, 
positions vital to the defensive of the new sea 
power against the Central Empires. Otherwise, 
the assurance of future safety will be precarious 
indeed. 

We must, in the third place, not allow the Cen- 
tral Empires to acquire a foothold on the Atlan- 
tic proper, whether in Africa, in South America, 
or elsewhere, from which a fleet, breaking through 
the cordon in the Channel, might be maintained 
while it contested the supremacy of the ocean 
at the same moment the armies of the Central 
Empires began a new offensive in Europe to 
destroy the territorial base of the Atlantic na- 
tions on the continent. To buy territorial se- 
curity in Europe at the price of Morocco, the 
Congo, or Venezuela would be a fatal blunder. 
Once Russia became either weak or undepend- 
able, no territorial rearrangement of eastern 
Europe could oppose the domination of the Cen- 
tral Powers and the whole was lost. Serbia, 
unfortunately, cannot be restored, partly be- 
cause the Austrians have left too small a frag- 
ment of its people alive to make possible the 
slightest effective resistance to them in future, 
partly because the new Serbia depended upon 
the creation of the new Rumania, the expulsion 
of the Turk from Europe, and, above all, upon 
Russia at Constantinople and in the eastern 

374 



THE TRUE MILITARY OBJECTIVE 

Balkans, undiminished in strength and influence. 
To purchase such a rearrangement at the risk 
of the decimation of France, the loss of the 
British fleet, or territorial concessions in Africa, 
would be to tie ourselves to the chariot wheels 
of a new conqueror. 

In the fourth place, the isolation of the Cen- 
tral Powers must be maintained after the war 
by the perpetuation of the present coalition of 
the Atlantic Powers. It will be inexpedient to 
create any league of nations, any international 
court or council, to which the Central Powers 
would be admitted on terms of equality. So 
long as they remain united, no international 
body can be better than a convenient method 
by which the two coalitions may discuss mooted 
issues and reach an agreement. 

No crushing of the Austro-German army or 
extirpation of militarism is feasible or impera- 
tive. If the western Allies were in future to 
protect themselves on the basis of their European 
strength alone in a world still dominated by the 
Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance, it would 
be perhaps imperative to destroy the German 
army to make possible the military domination 
of Europe by the French and the Russians. If 
the aim of the war was to free Austria-Hungary 
from the heavy hand of the army and bureau- 
cracy so as to liberate the true impulses of the 
people for democracy, nothing short of a de- 
struction of militarism could achieve it. If the 
territorial reorganization of southern and eastern 
Europe through a federation of new autonomous 

375 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

states was to be permanent, the organized mili- 
tary force of Germany and Austria must be 
utterly destroyed during the war. But none of 
those aims seem now possible; the collapse of 
Russia makes such a maximum victory in the 
field unduly costly to attain and not improbably 
futile to achieve any such results. So long as the 
peoples of the Central Empires co-operate of 
their own volition, no military victory can pre- 
vent them from instituting in the long run such 
form of government as they see fit. To inter- 
fere with the domestic administration of a united 
Germany and a loyal Austria-Hungary will re- 
quire not merely victory, but conquest, main- 
tained for a generation by military occupation 
of both countries. 

A relatively limited victory in France or in 
Italy is all that is either necessary or expedient. 
The prime consideration dictating the time of 
this final offensive is the fact that the Allies 
are not now prepared to exert their full force 
nor able to predicate with certainty the main- 
tenance of the armies already in France. The 
British and French must hold out until the 
United States can come to their aid. At all 
costs they must still be able to co-operate with 
full strength in delivering the final blow. The 
British and French armies must, therefore, not 
be wasted in offensives which cannot be finally 
effective until the United States is ready. It 
would seem wiser to undertake purposefully a 
purely defensive war for perhaps some years. 
The present offensives seem to play the German 

376 



THE TRUE MILITARY OBJECTIVE 

game; they are too costly of men and of muni- 
tions; the Allied position in Italy on the Piave 
is exceedingly dangerous and invites defeat. At 
the sacrifice of some little territory the Allies 
can withdraw to an absolutely secure line run- 
ning from Milan along the Apennines to the 
Adriatic, which can be defended with absolute 
assurance and at a minimum cost. After all, Mi- 
lan is the key to France, and so long as the Allies 
hold it the rear is safe. A few miles of territory 
here or there in Italy and in France are of no 
great importance now and on no account must 
the Allies give the Germans a chance to defeat 
them. No objective which they can possibly 
win in Italy is worth a moment's risk of a defeat. 
To be sure, we shall not give up Italy for lost, 
but we must realize and not minimize the 
strength of the German position, the elaborate- 
ness of their calculations, the additional power 
which the collapse of Russia puts in their hands, 
and admit that an impregnable defensive is now 
the essential thing. 

We must play for time. We must organize 
victory with deliberation, calmness, thorough 
calculation, with an impartial and objective 
study of all dispositions and requirements, with 
a whole-hearted and sincere renunciation of all 
dispositions not imperative to win. There is 
absolutely no hurry. The Germans cannot win 
more than we allow them to have in the west; 
they already have won more than we can prob- 
ably take away from them in the east. True, the 
Allies cannot neglect the value of time, but five 

377 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

or ten years can be provided for on a defensive 
basis, and in the mean time an irresistible offense 
can be organized; but it cannot be done in a 
moment, and it cannot be extemporized. Above 
all, it cannot be done on the basis of the past 
erroneous calculations and assumptions, the 
treatment of uncertainties as certainties, of the 
imponderables as dependables. 

Time, too, and this defensive will put great 
problems upon the German machine. It works 
best under stress; it is capably organized for 
defense, and is not so good at the work of peace. 
To utilize the strength of Central Europe is a 
tremendous task, and meanwhile the blockade 
may put a greater strain upon the German 
economic fabric than it can endure for so many 
years. If we are willing to pay for victory, we 
ought certainly to be willing to pay with a little 
patience. In France along the trench line the ut- 
most conservation of men and of material should 
obtain. It is imperative that the French army 
should be taken out of the trenches as com- 
pletely and as soon as possible. It has thus far 
borne the brunt of the war, and its losses have 
been fully as great as France can afford to bear, 
if she is to retain her proper strength after the 
war. The men themselves are war-worn, ner- 
vous, and weary; to leave them longer with 
any responsibility for the defense is to risk the 
destruction of France and make successful the 
German strategy of defeat. Six months' com- 
plete rest would recreate the French army. 
Without a strong France, defense on the conti- 

378 



THE TRUE MILITARY OBJECTIVE 

nent by the European members of the new 
Atlantic Powers cannot be predicated. 

Nor must the Allies move until the American 
army is fully ready to meet every emergency 
a"nd every contingency. To attempt a campaign 
a moment sooner is to sacrifice the British and 
French armies and to immolate the American 
army before it is able to defend itself. The 
necessary material for a great offensive is not 
yet to be had; the ships to bring it to the front 
are not yet available; the food reserve of the 
Atlantic nations has been sadly depleted by 
the war; the strain upon their economic fabrics 
has been very great. If the offensive for the 
time being can be abandoned and a purely de- 
fensive war fought with a minimum expenditure 
of material, it will greatly increase the chances 
of victory and the ease with which the Allied 
countries themselves can continue the war. 
Part of the labor at present going into the crea- 
tion of guns and munitions can then be turned 
into the creation of ships, the raising of food, 
the reconstruction of the industrial fabric in 
general, and the replacing of the railroad cars 
and engines worn out by the war. The economic 
fabric of the Allied nations must be rebuilt 
before they go on with the war. That means a 
defensive war for perhaps two years. They 
could then proceed with entire confidence that 
everything had been foreseen. New herds of 
cattle, adequate reserves of grain could have 
been created; the railroad systems of all coun- 
tries could have been put into excellent shape 

25 379 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

and an adequate number of ships built. All 
coidd easily be done if the strain at present on 
the raw material and the factories were relieved 
by the abandoning of the great offensive. 

There are also immediate problems to meet. 
Twenty-five hundred large guns were lost in 
Italy, and to replace them will require the en- 
tire output of the Allied countries for a year. 
The ship-building program in the United States 
has also been badly delayed, perhaps through 
no one's fault, but certainly with definite con- 
sequence. The partial destruction of Halifax, 
one of the important shipping-points in Canada, 
the burning of several munition factories in the 
United States, the destruction of great supplies 
of grain and of munitions by fire, were also very 
serious losses. Even more serious have been the 
results of the successive blizzards of January and 
February upon the coal output and upon the 
transportation system. For weeks ships loaded 
with indispensable material for France and Italy 
could not secure coal; the equipment of the rail- 
roads began to break down under the strain; and 
the supplying of the industrial and domestic 
structure of the country with coal and raw ma- 
terials and the transportation to the seaboard 
and shipment of food and manufactured goods 
have become problems of the first magnitude, 
which cannot be solved in a moment and which 
must necessarily delay the effective final prepara- 
tions. If political opposition to the administra- 
tion based upon this unprecedented situation 
should develop on a large scale and result at the 

380 



THE TRUE MILITARY OBJECTIVE 

coming election in November in the return of a 
Republican majority in Congress, an obstacle to 
the efficient conduct of the war would have been 
created which might very well prolong the con- 
flict some years or cause an inconclusive peace. 
If the whole administration could be changed as 
a result of the election as in England and France, 
the effect upon the prosecution of the war might 
conceivably be good, serious as it would be to 
lose Mr. Wilson's masterly direction of affairs 
merely to change the bureau chiefs. But to put 
a Republican Congress in Washington to criti- 
cize and hinder the work of a Democratic execu- 
tive who cannot be removed from office would 
be calamitous. We are told a new German air- 
craft program is in contemplation and a new sub- 
marine is being turned out. We must defend 
ourselves against both of these devices before we 
proceed with the offensive for ending the war. 
Otherwise our results are only too likely to be as 
before — inconclusive. 

No moral effect upon the peoples of the Allied 
countries of adverse nature need be feared if an 
adequate campaign of publicity explaining the 
purposes of the new strategy to the people can 
be undertaken. Nor is there any particular 
reason why it should not be. This campaign 
certainly concerns no factors not well known 
to the Germans, nor is it likely that the German 
spy system does not promptly learn everything 
of real value to them. If the governments 
could only frankly explain to their own people 
the purposes of the operation, anything what- 

381 



THE WINNING OF THE WAR 

ever could be undertaken without any effect 
upon the public morale, but the continuation 
of past secrecy will make difficult indeed the 
undertaking of a purely defensive campaign 
which may mean the sacrifice here and there 
of some territory in Italy and in France. 

What need for doubt that time, forethought, 
and intelligence can create an Allied offensive 
which will be irresistible? Why question the 
superior strength, capacity, and ability of the 
Atlantic Powers over the Central Empires? Why 
grieve because the German strategy of victory 
has already destroyed that straw man, that 
bogy, the old European balance of power? With 
all their secret service and mathematical cal- 
culations, the Germans never saw that the old 
balance of power was dead and a new interna- 
tional alliance bound to succeed it which their 
military dispositions could not assail, which has 
been cemented by their own methods of con- 
ducting the war as it never could have been by 
forces created by the Allies. Nothing but the 
great moral campaign against Germany could 
have created the conviction of the necessity of 
the new alliance, of the identity of interests of 
the Allied countries which now animates them 
all. Indeed, by precipitating the war, the Ger- 
mans expected to create a new empire. The 
very dispositions upon which they counted have 
created one — but it is not theirs. 

THE END 



BOOKS BY 

WOODROW WILSON 



HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

The particular value of Woodrow Wilson s history is 
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Five volumes, fully illustrated. Cloth, Three-quar- 
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i6mo 

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part of our government and interprets it in the light 
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THE GREAT WAR 

WHY WE ARE AT WAR 

Messages to the Congress, January to April, 1917 

By Woodrow Wilson 

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6th, 1917, and his Message to the American 

People, April 15th, 1917 

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and April, 1917. They should be read together in or- 
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events reflected in these consecutive chapters of history. 

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CONFESSIONS OF A WAR CORRESPONDENT 
By William G. Shepherd 

Correspondent of the United Press 

A "war-bcok" that is not of the ordinary sort. It 

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little things, the individual heroes, the personal danger 

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